The Competition and Markets Authority has secured £2m compensation from the care homes provider Sunrise Senior Living Ltd after it charged residents unclear upfront fees. And it’s partly thanks to you.
Over a year ago, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) asked the Which? community if we could help them gather evidence for their market study into care homes. The regulator was keen to learn about people’s poor experiences when dealing with care homes to feed into its investigations and final conclusions about whether the care home market really delivers for people who rely on its support.
And boy did we deliver. Over the course of the year, over a thousand of you shared your stories with the regulator – twice as much evidence as they were able to gather themselves! And this week, your stories bore fruit.
£2m in compensation
Through its consumer protection investigation, the CMA has secured £2m in compensation from the large care home provider, Sunrise Senior Living Ltd, for charging unclear upfront fees to care home residents and their families.
This win means that a whopping average of £3,000 will be paid back to each individual who was charged these fees since October 2015. The care home provider has also committed to stop charging these fees to future residents.
This week has been an important lesson for me as a campaigner. People’s experiences are incredibly important. If we want those who have the power to change things to actually change things then they need to know what’s going on, what impact it’s having on us and why it’s so important they act. And this week’s result has demonstrated that our actions and stories have impact.
So this is a big thank you – by sharing your stories, we achieved change and helped many people who’ve suffered from poor practice and contract terms get compensation, and saved many others from shelling out huge costs in the future too.
There’s still more to do
We’re going to continue pressing other care home providers to follow suit and scrap their unclear upfront fees. We’ll also urge the government to follow through on its commitments made in March 2018 to strengthen protections for residents and their families. We hope we can keep calling on your support to make change happen together.
Are you concerned about the UK care system and our rapidly ageing population?
Yes – it's a growing crisis. (97%, 2,028 Votes)
No – we'll cope with it. (2%, 43 Votes)
Not sure. (1%, 30 Votes)
Total Voters: 2,101
