THE government has no idea how many care home beds are available or occupied in the Island, the JEP has learned.
A series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that neither Health nor the Social Security and Housing departments hold records on how many Islanders are currently in care or how many beds are available.
The Jersey Care Commission has clarified that they regulate 1,335 beds in the Island, with that figure including care homes. However, it also includes beds dedicated to mental-health respite and those with disabilities.
In response to an FoI about the number of available beds in March 2025, the government said it did not hold the data. This was despite the fact that a majority of care home residents receive subsidies via the Long-Term Care scheme.
The government’s admission comes less than three months after the JEP reported that 32 patients were remaining in hospital, despite being fit to be discharged, due to a shortage of nursing home beds.
When asked about the lack of data, Health Minister Tom Binet said that “many other areas of Health are not connected”.
“Data is accumulated in a wide variety of areas, and it is not currently possible for much of it to be shared,” he explained.
Deputy Binet added that the creation of a “digital board” could help rectify the gap in the data, with the board’s remit to be to work out what all main areas of healthcare delivery would require over the next four years and to estimate the costs involved.
“It is certainly going to be expensive,” he said. “I will soon be going to the Assembly to request this money and hopefully we can get on with connecting everything up.”
The news comes as an emerging capacity crisis in the care sector looms, causing knock-on effects to other areas of available care, something which has been seen in the ongoing issue with bed-blocking in the Hospital.
Jersey, like many western jurisdictions, has an ageing population – in Statistics Jersey’s latest population and migration figures, published in December, the over-64s age bracket was the only demographic to increase in the five years from 2018 to 2023 , rising by 12%, or 2,150 people. Despite this increase, only one new care home has been established in Jersey in the past five years, Les Charrières, which was opened in 2020 by LV Care Group, providing 50 new beds.
See print and online editions of the JEP for interview with LV Care Group chief executive Nick Bettany.
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Do you have relatives in care in the Island and have you experienced delays getting care home beds? Do you believe the Island can cope with its ageing population?
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