The real issue

It is unsurprising that the Consumers' Association has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) over pricing issues in the care home sector. Advisers working in the long term care (LTC) market are all too familiar with the failings of the current system. The OFT plans to assess how transparent fees are. Although there is undoubtedly a need to make information on fees easier to understand, this is not the core failing of the system. What LTC advisers and campaigning groups such as Age Concern would like to see changed is the way care home prices are set by different local autho...