Sector news and updates

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The Independent Expert Panel (IEP), commissioned by the Health and Social Care Committee, have published their report on palliative and end of life care services in England.

The report follows an evaluation of palliative care services which began in March 2025. Hospice UK’s Clinical Quality Lead, Anita Hayes, was a member of the expert panel and we also submitted written evidence to inform the report’s findings.

We have put together a briefing summarising the reports key findings and you can find our public response to the report on our website.

For more information, please email our Policy team. 

The Northern Ireland Committee for Health has, for the past year, been undertaking an Inquiry into access to palliative care services. On Tuesday 2 December they published their report on the Inquiry.
 
This report reflects the scale of effort put in by the committee, and the volume of both written and oral evidence they took. The voice of the hospice sector is well-represented and several key recommendations from the report relate directly to hospices.
 
The recommendations from the report include:

• 100% funding for all hospice services with an initial 50% of actual cost of care for 2026-27, and a sliding scale increase over 5 years, based on cost of delivery of all hospice services
• A 24/7 PEOLC telephone and online central point of contact established for co-ordination of PEOLC assistance
• An internal policy branch with specific responsibility for PEOLC established in the Department of Health
• Hospices should be included in strategic planning at central department level which impacts hospice services and finances
• A new regional PEOLC Strategy introduced by the Department which takes account of diverse locality needs

The report also sets out that it costs the Department of Health over £1,100 to deliver a specialist palliative care bed night in the HSC-operated unit in Antrim, while hospice funding is benchmarked against a general medical bed which results in a payment for a hospice IPU bed of around £370 per night.
 
Hospice UK and the Hospice Alliance NI members met the Minister of Health on Wednesday 3 December. While there were no immediate commitments made to deliver the Committee recommendations, it was helpful to have the chance to meet with the Minister as he considers his full response to the Committee.