Casey Commission on Adult Social Care: What You Need to Know

The Casey Commission is the government's Independent Commission on Adult Social Care in England, chaired by crossbench peer Baroness Louise Casey and tasked with designing a National Care Service. Ministers announced it on 3 January 2025; it started formally in April 2025, with terms of reference published on 6 May 2025 setting out two phases: a medium-term plan due in 2026, then long-term funding recommendations due "by 2028." That timetable has since changed. On 29 July 2026, in his first major social care speech as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham announced the two phases would be merged into a single report, brought forward a year to summer 2027. "Social care reform" is the wider project the Commission sits inside: fixing how England pays for and organises care for older and disabled adults, a problem five independent commissions and a dozen government papers have failed to resolve since 1998.

What the Commission is for

Baroness Casey's brief, set by the Department of Health and Social Care, is to recommend how to reform adult social care and to set out an implementation plan for a National Care Service, a government manifesto commitment. It follows a long run of public-service reviews she has led for governments of both parties, including the Rough Sleepers' Unit, the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, the UK's first Victims' Commissioner role and the 2011 Troubled Families programme.

Two phases become one

The Commission's terms of reference, published 6 May 2025, split the work in two. Phase 1, reporting in 2026, was to set out a medium-term plan to make social care "more productive, preventative" and give people who draw on care more power in the system. Phase 2, due "by 2028," was to make longer-term recommendations on funding and the shape of services. That split no longer applies. On 29 July 2026, speaking from a care home in London, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in office since 20 July 2026, announced the timetable would be accelerated: Baroness Casey will now publish one final report in summer 2027, a year earlier than the original Phase 2 date, combining both immediate and long-term recommendations. The same day, Casey launched a public consultation, "The Big Conversation on Care," inviting citizens to help define what the system should deliver.

What Casey has recommended so far

Ahead of that final report, the Commission has already made specific recommendations for near-term action. In a 5 March 2026 speech at the Nuffield Trust Summit, Baroness Casey called for a "moment of reckoning" for social care and set out immediate actions for government covering dementia care, motor neurone disease and adult safeguarding. The Health Secretary responded by backing further work on dementia and promising an interim Dementia and Frailty Modern Service Framework. These are interim recommendations, not the Commission's full report, which is still to come.

A long line of unresolved reviews

The Commission is not the first attempt to fix this. The King's Fund has counted twelve government green papers, white papers or consultations, and five independent commissions or reviews, on social care funding since 1998 alone. Two of those five are named repeatedly in the record: the 2011 Dilnot Commission, which recommended a £35,000 cap on lifetime care costs, and the King's Fund's own Barker Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care, chaired by Kate Barker, which reported in September 2014. Neither produced lasting reform. Casey is the next in that line, not the first.

DateEventSourceJuly 2011Dilnot Commission recommends a £35,000 cap on lifetime care costsAge UKSeptember 2014Barker Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care reports, chaired by Kate BarkerThe King's Fund3 January 2025Government announces the Casey CommissionCommunity CareApril 2025Commission starts formally; evidence-gathering beginsThe Casey Commission6 May 2025Terms of reference published: two phases, reporting 2026 and "by 2028"Hansard5 March 2026Casey's "moment of reckoning" speech sets out immediate recommendationsThe Casey Commission20 July 2026Andy Burnham becomes Prime MinisterNBC News29 July 2026Burnham accelerates the Commission to one report, due summer 2027; "Big Conversation on Care" launchedGOV.UK

Damian Green, chair of the Social Care Foundation and former First Secretary of State, responding to Baroness Casey's speech to the Local Government Association's annual conference in Bournemouth: "A national conversation about the future of social care is long overdue, so this is very welcome."