Care Show review
Care Show Birmingham 2025: Editor’s review
The care sector’s premier event returned to NEC Birmingham at the beginning of October. The Care Home Environment editorMatt Seex picks some highlights
This year’s Care Show Birmingham, which was held on 8/9 October at the NEC, was once again a busy and vibrant event. At this year’s show, The Care Home Environment had the pleasure of launching The Care Home Industry Handbook, which we hope will prove an invaluable resource for decision makers in care. Certainly, if reaction at the show to the inaugural 2026 Edition is anything to go by, the future looks bright for the latest addition to our growing portfolio and we are already looking forward starting work on the 2027 Edition. In another first, Care Show Birmingham
2025 saw me step in front of a camera to conduct a series of video interviews with a number of care sector big hitters. Among those I spoke to were Richard Ayres, social care advisor for Care England, and I asked him which issues were currently of greatest concern to Care England members. “Workforce is always a problem,” Richard
told me. “We’ve got a huge issue with losing our domestic workforce quicker than we can retain them. We’ve had the plug pulled on
international recruitment. We’re concerned about the rise of agency [working]. It’s at its lowest point now for a long time but we expect that to rise over the next couple of years. The Employment Rights Bill and the fair pay agreement are in process and more consultations are coming. They are huge costs to us as a sector from a workforce perspective.” That said, when I asked Richard how
Care England and its members currently perceived the work of the CQC, the outlook was more positive. “The CQC is changing,” he acknowledged.
“They are starting to listen to the social care sector and they’re making changes. They’re reviewing the quality statements. They’re reviewing how they do things, how they engage, how they train their staff, how they collect information. They’ve really listened to the feedback of the Dash review, the Richards review, and the Care Providers Alliance and the work that we’ve done to support that.” I also asked Richard what, in Care
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www.thecarehomeenvironment.com November 2025
England’s view, the government ought to be doing for the care sector. He pointed to the widening gulf between the care costs that fall on local authorities and the resources allocated to cover this – a gap calculated to be at least £5bn – as well as chronic staffing issues. Richard: “450,000 people left the
sector in the last 12 months. What the government could do is help us to find practical solutions for retaining our staff. That’s where they really need to focus. They need to get their ducks in a row because they’re very disjointed. They’re not joining all of their strategic directions together. The Department of Health and Social Care need to really kick the Home Office up the backside and say ‘bring back our international workforce’ because they are what’s going to save our sector. If you want to create a social care sector that’s fit for the future, we need international workers because they are fantastic. They work so incredibly hard. They compensate where we’ve got gaps in our workforce. They’re
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