Cost of living crisis: Peterborough’s Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice sees 10 per cent rise in total care costs

Peterborough’s Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice has seen a 10 per cent rise in the total costs to keep its services running.

Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice, in Longthorpe, is the only specialist palliative care inpatient unit in Peterborough.

The national healthcare charity has said that the cost of living crisis has resulted in costs to continue its palliative and neurological care services escalating – despite there being an increasing demand for its services.

According to the Sue Ryder charity, a total of 245,000 people in England are expected to receive palliative care from the charity this year – which is set to rise by 134,000 people to an estimated 379,000 people per year by 2030.

Alan Bowers, chief operating officer for Sue Ryder, which runs Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice in Peterborough, said: "The cost of living crisis is having an impact on Sue Ryder. As a national healthcare charity we are currently seeing around a 10 per cent increase in the total costs to keep our palliative and neurological care services running.

"However, the NHS grants we receive for our palliative care services have on average increased by around one per cent.”

The charity said that although it is currently in a “stable position financially” it expects the rising cost of living to have an impact on its ability to raise the money required to continue its work.

“We are continuing to review the situation and plan accordingly,” Mr Bowers said. “We need to plan for the unknown levels of rising costs in the future.

"We are also mindful that with everyone facing soaring costs this will have an impact our ability to raise vital funds when Sue Ryder hospices and palliative care hubs already only receive around one third of the money required to run our end of life care services from the government.

"Our ambition remains to provide more care for more people, but rising costs and any impact on our ability to fundraise could mean we're not able to grow our palliative care services as quickly as we had hoped to meet an increasing unmet need for palliative care.

Sue Ryder nurses and Thorpe Hall Hospice provided 145,000 hours of palliative care and support to patients and their families last year.

Its doctors, nurses and carers work to give patients the expert care they need to help them live the best lives they can.

Mr Bowers thanked the Peterborough community for their ongoing support for the charity.

"The community in Peterborough and wider Cambridgeshire have always been such a massive support to us and we are so grateful for this,” he said.

"We hope our local communities will continue to donate whatever they can afford to give or take part in our many fundraising activities to continue to support us."

To find out more about how you can support the Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice, more information can be found by clicking here.