It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Czajka Care Group’s managing director, Konrad Czajka, who is also chair of the Bradford Care Association.
In 2026 Local Authorities will remain under intolerable financial pressure despite a 15% real term increase in adult social care funding. The number of people receiving care has stayed consistent, but inflation, wage costs and new statutory duties have swallowed those increases.
There seems to be no visible movements of funding from hospitals into the community, as billions are still spent on delayed discharges and acute care.
The Government speaks of ‘growth’, well social care is a growth sector. The latest Skills for Care Report states that the social care sector contributes £77.8 billion to the economy. The sector employs 1.6 million people across 17,900 organisations, thus having a workforce size larger than the NHS. The Skills for Care Report projects we need another 470,000 workers by 2040 just to meet expected demand. In 2025 the vacancy rate was around 7% which equates to 111,000 posts, and in 2026, as international recruitment stops, vacancies will shoot straight back up.
The social care sector was rightly praised during the pandemic, but since then we have been largely forgotten. We are caring for older, frail and disabled people who are living longer, often with multiple conditions and many with dementia. The challenges of 2025, such as increasing Employers National Insurance contributions, will continue to hit the care sector hard in 2026 as care is labour intensive and heavily reliant on part-time workers, who are mainly women.
The Employment Rights Bill going through the final stages of the Parliamentary process is expected to be implemented in April 2026. This will present many challenges for adult social care with the changes in unfair dismissal rights, zero-hour contracts and statutory sick pay.
The closure of the Care Worker Visa and all the additional immigration changes for existing international workers, as mentioned previously, will also be detrimental to the current vacancy rates.
In 2026 social care does not need more sympathy, it needs fair funding, practical reform and genuine partnership.
