Sector news and updates

Keep up-to-date with discussions and activity around assisted dying by bookmarking our information page for members.

This is a reminder that your completed Hospice Costing Model spreadsheets are due at the end of this week on Friday 13 March.

The model was launched as part of the commissioning support pack and is already being used by hospices, collaboratives and regions to allocate expenditure across hospice services.

When supplying your data, we have intentionally created the model to be as flexible as possible. Therefore, if possible, please submit the actual figures for your most recently complete financial year. If this is not possible, we will accept budget or extrapolated actual figures for the current year.

Please return your completed spreadsheet to Craig Duncan so that Hospice UK can collate the data and use it to strengthen national funding discussions.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted their data already. As highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee, there is increasing focus on understanding national reference costs or unit costs and community currencies for future palliative care funding models. To ensure we can represent the sector effectively in such conversations, we need accurate cost information from all hospices.

Join our next Big Conversation webinar on Hospice ICB funding successes, which takes place on 24 March from 10:00 to 11:30.

We will be hearing from Emily Carter, CEO at Royal Trinity Hospice and Jane Wheeler, CEO at Harlington Hospice on their ICB funding success and Camilla Barrow, CEO at LOROS Hospice on winter pressures funding.

Sign up to join this session on our website.

Our next National Transitions community of practice meeting is on Thursday 26 March, from 10:00 to 11:30.

Ben Troke, a lawyer in the health and social care sector and partner in a law firm, is joining us for the second part of our 'Transition - Legal aspects of young adult care' sessions. In this meeting he will cover: 

• Gillick competence
• parental responsibility and disputes
• transition into the Mental Capacity Act

To take part, please sign up to join the National Transitions community of practice. You will then be sent a meeting invitation.

We have partnered with the Screwfix Foundation to help hospices carry out small capital projects that will directly benefit patients and their families. We are looking to award grants of up to £10,000 per hospice, with a total of £100,000 available.

Any hospice that is a member of Hospice UK can apply for this grant, including NHS Hospices. This covers the whole of the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It includes children’s and adult hospices.

As well as the funding, successful applicants will receive support from Hospice UK throughout the life of your project. We will also help you share learning from your project with other hospices.

There is just over one month left to apply. Find out more about the grants programme and how to apply on our website. Applications close on 13 April 2026 at 17:00.

This year, Dying Matters Awareness Week will take place from Monday 4 May to Sunday 10 May. Our theme is: Let’s talk about death and dying.

Dying Matters exists to break the stigma and taboo that still surround conversations about death and dying. But we also know that getting those conversations started is often the hardest part. Talking to a family member can feel very different from talking to a colleague, and different again when expressing one’s own dying wishes.

Our focus this year is on the kinds of conversations that help people feel able to open up – the everyday exchanges that make these topics feel less daunting. Because when we don’t know how to talk about death and dying, it can be even harder to make sense of it when it touches our lives.

It’s easy for your hospice to get involved by planning an event during the week or by engaging with the campaign on social media. Our Supporter Resource Packs will be ready for your comms teams to download in early April.

On 5 March, 15 MPs spoke in a backbench business debate in Westminster on the Future of Palliative Care. Multiple MPs recognised the funding cliff edge many hospices face, and the importance of fair sustainable funding, as being called for in our Fair Funding for Hospices campaign.

Across the debate, MPs highlighted the huge impact their local hospice has on communities.

The full debate is available to watch here. If you have any questions or would like more information, please email our policy team.

The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill is at the final Stage 3 of the scrutiny process. The bill will be considered by the Scottish Parliament on:

• Tuesday 10 March - MSPs will debate and vote on further amendments to the bill
• Tuesday 17 March - MSPs will debate and vote on the final version of the bill. This is the final decision point on whether the bill will become law.

Hospice UK has worked with Jackie Baillie MSP to lodge further amendments designed to strengthen the amendment we secured at Stage 2 around developing a code of practice on the interaction between assisted dying and palliative care services.

Read our briefing that provides a full update ahead of the Stage 3 amendments.