'Without the public's help we would not exist'
St Michael's Hospice in Hereford is attempting to open up a large new furniture and homeware store in Shropshire, as a way of getting extra cash.
They have revealed that more than 80% of their funding now relies on public donations - at a time when they are facing escalating costs and a rise in referrals of 119 per cent since 2017.
Chief executive Matt Fellows said: "It's a real challenge, as it is for hospices around the country at the moment."
Mr Fellows also said he was concerned that hospices face a postcode lottery when it comes to funding.
"We've got a continued cost of living pressure, and we feel that - the National Insurance changes this year alone cost us £240,000," he said.
He also added that people are living longer as a society, but not necessarily healthier.
"We're seeing people referred with greater complexity, across the UK, within palliative and end-of-life care," he said.
"It's a big struggle (to fund everything) - in round figures it costs around £12 million a year to run everything here, we get £2 million from the National Health Service so we've got to find £10 million from our community.
"We are incredibly fortunate in that they are very generous - but actually if our community stopped funding us, we would cease to exist pretty quickly."
St Michael's Hospice cared for 2,300 people last year - that's compared to just over 1,000 people in 2017.
The furniture store will be on a manufacturing site in Ludlow - a planning application is currently being considered by Shropshire Council.
In the application, it states that the hospice's services 'will be at risk' unless the plan is approved.
Mary Roche, who is 42 and lives in Hereford, is a Stage 4 lung cancer patient and has been accessing the hospice's day care services since 2023.
"It's a non-smoking lung cancer - I was diagnosed when I was 39, I coughed up a lot of blood and went for an X-ray," she said.
"I come here for counselling and to see the physio, and they've also been very good with counselling to support my family," she said.
"I come in and feel calm. I just think it's crazy that hospices are so underfunded across the country - it's just mind-boggling really."
In December hospices across England were awarded £100m of government funding over two years to improve end-of-life care.
Another £26m was promised to hospices for children and young people, which was a continuation of money previously given through a grant.
It came after hospice leaders warned they were forced to close beds due to increasing financial pressures.
Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Hereford
Hospices to share £775k to upgrade facilities
Hospices in England to receive £100m funding boost
St Michael's Hospice
Hospice UK
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Three-quarters of small businesses will raise prices - yet nearly half are seeing profits shrink
A new survey among small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) has found that a huge majority expect to be raising prices over the next year, with optimism split on whether they will survive or thrive amid challenging economic conditions. Business owners have been hit this year by raised National Insurance Contributions and a higher minimum wage, while a new pensions review could ultimately see them have to contribute more in the future as well. Meanwhile inflation from raw materials and higher energy costs have meant that their own prices have been on the increase, contributing to overall UK inflation levels. In addition, tariff uncertainty impacted those exporting to the US in the earlier part of the year before a trade deal was agreed. It all amounts to a difficult backdrop for companies this year, with SMEs typically harder-hit than larger businesses when consumer spending drops. Unsurprisingly, that means shoppers can expect to see another price hike coming in many places across the rest of 2025 and beyond, as detailed in a report by Simply Business, an insurance firm representing close to a million SMEs across the UK. A massive three-quarters (74 per cent) of more than 2,300 business owners surveyed said they'll need to raise prices in the coming year, an increase from the two-thirds who said so in 2024. More than three in five (63 per cent) businesses anticipate raising prices up to 20 per cent, but only 2 per cent expect prices to decrease in the coming 12 months. Despite those price increases, the businesses are not making more money. Nearly half (44 per cent) see profits decreasing in 2025, with fewer than two in five (17 per cent) expecting to see a rise in profits. Almost as many (16 per cent) say their profits will go down by more than a quarter. High street at stake An ongoing trend has been concerns about the long term future of the UK high street. Smaller businesses are increasingly despondent about its future, with a huge 82 per cent of SMEs saying their local high street has declined, 74 per cent saying shopper numbers are down and nearly two-thirds - 63 per cent - believing the notion of the national high street will be obsolete within ten years. As a result of this, more than a third of small business owners (37 per cent) are considering selling up or closing their doors this year for good. Government support is needed, the majority feel, to ensure a turnaround. Fewer 'chains' and more independent shops are seen as the best way to aid a reversal of fortunes, with free or cheap parking and more events of wider options of things to do also high on the list. The survey further revealed a quarter of small business owners expected to have to use their savings to prop up their business - yet despite these apparent hardships, more than half, 57 per cent, still feel optimism about their business' future. That is backed up by figures showing the number of new businesses registered in the first three months of this year was up almost 3 per cent compared to the same time last year. Small businesses contribute more than £2.8tn in turnover to the economy and account for more than half of the UK's private sector employment. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
3 days ago
Doctors in England start a 5-day strike over pay
LONDON -- Thousands of doctors in England's state-funded health system walked off the job Friday in a five-day strike over pay that the government says will disrupt care for patients across the country. Resident doctors, those early in their careers who form the backbone of hospital and clinic care, took to picket lines outside hospitals after talks with the government broke down. The National Health Service said emergency departments would be open and hospitals and clinics would try to carry out as many scheduled appointments as possible. The doctors are seeking a pay raise to make up for what their union, the British Medical Association, says is a 20% real-terms pay cut since 2008. Dr. Melissa Ryan and Dr. Ross Nieuwoudt, chairs of the union's resident doctors committee, said 'pay erosion has now got to the point where a doctor's assistant can be paid up to 30% more than a resident doctor.' The government says doctors have received an average 28.9% increase and it will not offer more, but is willing to discuss improved working conditions. Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged the doctors to go back to work. 'Most people do not support these strikes. They know they will cause real damage,' he wrote in the Times newspaper. 'Behind the headlines are the patients whose lives will be blighted by this decision. The frustration and disappointment of necessary treatment delayed. And worse, late diagnoses and care that risks their long-term health," Starmer wrote. Health sector staff staged a series of rolling strikes over more than a year in 2023-24, seeking pay rises to offset the rising cost of living. The strikes forced tens of thousands of appointments and procedures to be postponed. The strikes hit efforts by the National Health Service to dig out of an appointment backlog that ballooned after the COVID-19 pandemic and led to longer waiting times to see a doctor. The strikes stopped after the Labour government elected in July 2024 gave doctors a raise, but the union held a new strike vote last month.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
The £70bn pension tax raid Reeves may not be able to resist
Rachel Reeves is eyeing up your pension. The Chancellor is struggling to balance the books, so where better to look than Gordon Brown's favourite cash cow? It is becoming increasingly likely that she will have to follow in the footsteps of the chancellor whose framed photo she kept as a student, by launching a raid on retirement pots this autumn. As Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, highlighted conspicuously last week, the Government offers tax relief worth £70bn every year to encourage workers to save. While he insisted that incentives to save were 'a good thing', Bell refused to rule out a raid in the future. But while pensions might be a tempting target, the risk of unintended consequences is high. By taking a slice of pension savings, Reeves could inadvertently discourage people from stashing money away or lead to lower pay for the very people that Labour promises to protect. Roughly £12.8bn of individual contributions were made to personal pensions in 2022-23. Data published by the taxman show that in 2022–23, the Government gave up £46.8bn it would have collected if pension contributions had been subject to income tax. That is in addition to £24bn it would have raised if employer pension contributions had been subject to National Insurance (NI) contributions. Another telling statement by Bell this week was that the Government wanted to ensure that people are not 'taxed twice' on the money they save for retirement. He said: 'What does the pension tax system do? It makes it easy for people to smooth their incomes over their lifetime. We're not taxing you twice. That is an important feature of most tax systems, and it will remain an important feature.' But that statement still leaves some low-hanging fruit for the Chancellor to pluck. The first is salary sacrifice, where staff agree to forego a portion of their salary in return for the same amount being ploughed into a workplace pension. As a result, employees can reduce their NI contributions and benefit from tax relief on the money they add to their pension. Employers, who already don't pay NI on an employee's pension contributions, can also reduce their tax bill further because the sacrifice serves as a pay cut. Pensioners do not pay NI, leaving scope for the Government to start taxing one side of this equation and still abide by this principle. HMRC estimates that it lost out on £3.9bn in NI receipts because of salary sacrifice schemes, which would be a princely sum for a cash-strapped Chancellor. In addition, employees currently benefit from roughly £6bn a year in income tax relief through salary sacrifice. 'A generous and opaque subsidy' The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has urged the Government to go further by moving towards levying NI on employer pension contributions as a principle. Carl Emmerson, the deputy director of the IFS, describes the absence of NI on employer pension contributions as 'a very generous and very opaque subsidy' that if removed entirely, could boost the Treasury's coffers by more than £17bn a year. However, with businesses still reeling from a £25bn NI raid on employers, this would be a politically toxic move, and one that Emmerson says will have consequences for working people. 'It would almost certainly put downward pressure on pay, and would also make government spending less generous because lots of public sector workers get generous employer pension contributions, and those public sector employers would find their national insurance bills going up,' he says. To ease pressures, Reeves could choose to reimburse public sector employers as she did during last autumn's raid. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that doing so would cost £5bn – though the measure would still raise £12bn. A more radical option would be to restrict the income tax relief that applies when a worker makes pension contributions at a flat rate of 30pc. This would benefit those on modest income, but at the expense of higher earners. Economists estimate the measure would affect up to 6m higher and additional rate taxpayers, costing the wealthiest savers about £2,600. HMRC estimates show that 37pc of income tax relief on total contributions is provided at the basic rate, just over half at the higher rate and 7pc at the top 45p rate. However, Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister, says the Treasury has shied away from this reform because of its hideous complexity, as well as the significant impact it would have on public sector workers and the implications for their gold-plated, final-salary pensions. Sir Steve says: 'The challenge for the Government with potential cuts to pension tax relief is that a significant part of the existing tax break goes to long-serving and senior public servants, typically in defined-benefit pension arrangements.' Any cut to higher rate relief or tax-free lump sums would affect many such workers adversely at a time when the Government already has issues with the public sector workforce over pay. As this group is part of Labour's core voting base, it is likely to be wary of alienating them further. 'Constant meddling' Baroness Altmann, another former pensions minister, warns that changes to pensions, including Reeves's decision to bring pension pots into the scope of inheritance tax, could leave many people without the means to support themselves later in retirement. 'The constant tax meddling has been a disaster for pensions,' she says. Altmann warns that private sector employees are likely to be left footing the bill for any further changes. 'We're already subsidising hugely generous public sector pensions that the private sector can almost never dream of,' she says. There is also another element of the pensions system that is currently tax-free on the way in and out: the amount that can be taken from pension pots. Tax-free lump sum Currently, people can take up to 25pc of any pension as a tax-free lump sum when they reach 55, up to a maximum of £286,275. Reducing the amount to £100,000 would affect about one in five retirees, and raise £2bn in the long run, according to the IFS. A similar proposal is being pushed by the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society, and it is understood that Treasury officials have urged previous chancellors to look at the relief, which costs about £5.5bn a year. Emmerson says: 'If you've already got £900,000 in your pension pot, it's not obvious why the taxpayer should be subsidising you to put more in your pension. These people can't really claim that they're under-saving for retirement.' However, he makes a more obvious point that should make Reeves think twice if she wants to raid workplace pension savings. 'This would almost exclusively be paid by workers,' he says. A Treasury spokesman said they were 'committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible'. However, it's now clear that they're going to go up. The question is by how much. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
