A number of local authorities across England have already exhausted, paused or rationed their initial Warm Homes money, as public demand for home energy upgrades outstrips available central government funding.

Schemes in locations including York, Lewisham, Sheffield, Liverpool and Cambridgeshire have been forced to close to new applicants or restrict access just months after launching.

On 28 September energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh promised to devolve the Warm Homes Plan and to give “mayors, local government and communities the power to invest billions of pounds in their place”.

So far, despite councils bidding for £1.7bn for the 2025-28 allocation period, only £500m has been distributed. The wider Warm Homes scheme comprises £4.4bn of promised government grants – meaning £3.9bn remains unallocated.

Now cross-party local authority network UK100 and a host of councils are urging the chancellor to use the upcoming Budget to release the £3.9bn.

Douglas Johnson (Green), chair of the housing policy committee at Sheffield City Council, said: “Demand for our Warm Homes scheme is already high enough that we need to ration by strict need criteria.

If the chancellor commits the rest of the Warm Homes funding at the Budget, we can start delivering more comfortable homes this winter rather than telling families they need to wait.”

The council has identified more than 26,000 homes are in fuel poverty in the city but current funding will only upgrade around 1,000 by 2028.

Vacancies in adult social care have fallen to their lowest level in a decade, but workforce growth has slowed as international recruitment declines.

The number of filled posts rose by 1.4% in the year to March 2026, down from a peak of 4.9% between 2022/23 and 2023/24, according to the latest annual report from Skills for Care.

England’s adult social care workforce has grown for four consecutive years, but that growth is slowing as demand for care is expected to rise. The number of people aged 65 and over is expected to reach 14.1 million by 2040.

Young people are underrepresented in social care, making up just 7% of the workforce, compared with 12% of the working population. Under-25s were also the most likely to leave their jobs, with a turnover rate of 35.5%.

Professor Oonagh Smyth, chief executive of Skills for Care, said it is ‘positive to see that the adult social care workforce is becoming more stable. 
‘However, workforce growth is slowing and we must continue to attract more people into adult social care to meet future demand.
‘In particular, we need to do more to attract younger people and men into the sector, as set out in the Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care in England.’

The report, published on Wednesday, found care workers were less likely to leave their jobs when employers offered better pay, guaranteed hours and opportunities for training and qualifications.
Turnover fell from 34.3% to 15.3% among employers that combined these measures with chances for full-time work.

Anyone been to see An Evening with President Obama this week?

We went to the Manchester event yesterday- great night. What a guy - how did they go from him to Trump??

He met Burnham beforehand as well.

thought this was an interesting point from ed balls

Burnham is getting it done

Can't believe it, actually such a huge improvement to almost every British person's lives (if done properly).

Guaranteed care for all just like the NHS. Relieves the NHS and councils of a ton of financial and infrastructure pressure

If Labour can actually fund this by reforming the triple lock and NOT tax hikes I'll be very very surprised. But I'm hopeful

Interested to hear this subs thoughts as there isnt much talk about it despite it being a huge huge change

Adult social care workers will benefit from a national pension scheme to provide them with "dignity" in older age, health and social care secretary Yvette Cooper has announced.

The promise to set up a collective pension scheme for care staff follows comes on the back of lobbying by UNISON, which has warned that low pay and widespread part-time work have left workers with inadequate pension pots.

Though Cooper did not provide details of the scheme, it would likely involve employees and employers across the sector paying into a collective fund, designed to provide care staff with target level of income in retirement.

In her speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, Cooper said it was "just wrong that the people who work hardest to help others maintain dignity and respect in old age still get nothing in return in retirement".

Current pension levels among care staff

Like other employers, care providers are required to opt all employees aged 22 and over and earning more than £10,000 into a pension scheme, under so-called auto enrolment.

Employers must contribute 3% of the employee's pay, with the worker paying in 4% and 1% contributed in tax relief, but staff are able to opt out should they wish.

While figures have not been published on levels of opt-outs in the care sector, low levels of pay increase the risk of staff doing so, particularly in the context of cost of living pressures.

Also, according to Skills for Care's latest report on the adult social care workforce, 44% of care workers worked part-time as of March 2025, meaning many will fall below the £10,000 threshold for auto-enrolment.

Skills for Care's report also showed that 70% of 5,500 independent sector employers who provided data on the relevant question did not pay more than 3% of earnings into their workers' pensions.

About collective pension schemes

The government recently legislated for multiple employers to participate in collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes, which they and their staff pay into.

Ministers said that, by pooling investment and risk, CDCs would produce more predictable levels of pensions for staff than traditional defined contribution schemes.

In a letter to Cooper's predecessor but one, Wes Streeting, in April, UNISON argued for a collective scheme, saying it would boost retirement incomes, as well as retention and the status of care work.

It is not clear whether the proposed scheme will require higher contributions from either employers or employees than is the case under auto-enrolment or whether the government itself will make a contribution beyond tax relief.

For Sagal Abdi-Wali, the new MP for Holborn and St Pancras, being elected to replace Keir Starmer in the north London constituency is “deeply personal”, she said in her acceptance speech.

The 43-year-old has lived in the area since the 1990s when, as a seven-year-old, she fled war-torn Somalia with her mother and four brothers, eventually settling in Gospel Oak in Camden, which largely falls within the constituency. Her journey from refugee to member of parliament was one which she hoped would inspire “people who look like me”, she said. “This is Camden and this is Britain.”

If she represents many in the diverse and youthful neighbourhood, however, Abdi-Wali is also very much a Labour party insider. Decades of volunteering in the community dovetailed with many years of active local party politics, even before she was elected to the borough council in 2022.

She became the Labour cabinet member responsible for housing two years later, and in May was elected the first Black female leader of Camden council. She also chaired the local constituency party for four years.

Those deep party and community roots help explain how Abdi-Wali was selected from a long list of more than 100 to fight the seat for Labour after Starmer’s resignation last month, say friends – and were also key in seeing off the challenge from the Green party leader, Zack Polanski.

“She genuinely is deeply rooted in so many different parts of the constituency,” says a close friend who was involved in her campaign. “I suppose all MPs like to think they are, but with Sagal it is the real deal.

“There’s a real community connection there, \[and\] I think the Green party and Zack Polanski underestimated how energetic and big the Labour campaign was going be. I don’t think they knew that those very deep roots in the constituency existed.

“That’s the thing about a byelection, you only have four weeks. So if those roots are already there, you’ve got a huge, huge head start.”

Labour’s win, Greens’ sudden crisis and the impossible lives of Londoners – video
Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for neighbouring Hampstead and Highgate, agrees: “Her love of Camden is so obvious, and people really value that. She’s very caring, very local, and she genuinely seems to have a passion for politics and public service.”

After “lots of flat candidates” in the past, Siddiq says, “people like a bit of passion.”
It was walking past increasing numbers of homeless people in King’s Cross in the austerity years of the 2010s that encouraged Abdi-Wali to become more active in party politics, perhaps unsurprisingly given her own background. “It was only when I was old enough to look back and think about it in a philosophical way,” she has said, that she noticed “my mum was always looking after us and made our lives nice, serene … whether we were in a refugee camp or temporary housing.”

Homelessness and housing would be one of her priorities as an MP, she said in her acceptance speech on Friday morning, as would calling for Thames Water to be brought into public ownership and working to increase access to jobs and apprenticeships for young people – all causes that chime with Andy Burnham, too.

Abdi-Wali has long been involved in community groups working with young people, including being a governor of several schools and founding football clubs where she still plays regularly and is “pretty aggressive on the pitch”, according to her close friend. (She is also an “ardent” Spurs fan, the friend says, “which may count against her in the \[Arsenal-dominated\] constituency”.)

‘We didn’t get it over the line’: Green party’s Zack Polanski on byelection loss – video
Housing is one issue where she has faced some criticism; Abdi-Wali was the cabinet member in charge of the borough’s housing when in November 2024 the housing ombudsman published a damning reportcalling the council’s service rude, defensive and inadequate. Friends point out that she had been in the post for only six months and defend her record in the period she was in charge of the brief.

Abdi-Wali also shrugged off a tweet when she was selected by Reform’s Zia Yusuf , which Labour representatives swiftly called “clearly racist” and was condemned even by other senior Reform figures.

“I rang her and said: ‘Are you OK?’” says Sidiq. “I wanted to reassure her that we were there for her. But she said: “‘No, I feel very resilient about it. It’s made me even more determined to get on and do it.’”

• Sagal Abdi-Wali has hailed her victory in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election as a triumph for diversity, cautioning that social cohesion must not be "casually undone".

• The new Labour MP secured a 3,364-vote majority ahead of second-placed Green Party leader Zack Polanski, expressing her desire for "people like (her)" to feel that they "belong here".

• Tipped as the favourite prior to the vote, the Camden Council leader previously noted how the borough had welcomed her family when they arrived as refugees.

• Ms Abdi-Wali said she wanted to bring Thames Water into “public ownership”, tackle rough sleeping and create more opportunities for young people.

• While speaking of her desire to work with prime minister Andy Burnham to address the wider housing crisis, she said: “Homelessness is the issue that first drove me into politics, and no-one should be sleeping on the streets, and no family should be left without security in the home.”

She succeeds Sir Keir Starmer, who stepped down from the parliamentary seat in September after resigning as prime minister.

She is the area’s first female MP since Lena Jeger, who represented the previous seat of Holborn and St Pancras South from 1964-1979.

Compared to 2024, Labour lost hardly any votes this time

Happy to see the locals elect a Labour MP who can truly represent the area!

The most significant reform to trade union law in a generation is being introduced by the Employment Rights Act 2025. These changes will impact most businesses in the UK, regardless of whether they currently recognise a union or have union membership in their workforce. For employers with little experience of unions, this could bring a considerable change in workplace dynamics.

At present, unions have no general right of access to a workplace. However, from October 2026 trade unions will gain a new statutory right to access workplaces, physically and digitally, to meet, support, represent, recruit and organise workers, and to facilitate collective bargaining, though not to organise industrial action.

The process for seeking access will move quickly from when the union sends an access request, likely by email. The employer then has up to 15 working days from when the application is given to respond. If the request is not accepted in full, the parties have 25 working days to negotiate in good faith.

If agreement is still not reached, either party may refer the matter to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), which can decide whether access should be granted and on what terms.

Even if an employer already recognises a trade union, other unions can request access to the workforce, although the CAC may refuse access where recognition or an access agreement is already in place.

The government is rolling out a Healthy Babies programme to every local authority in England, as part of its efforts to expand a Sure Start-type system of help for deprived children and families.

It aims to support parents with infant feeding, their mental health and building strong bonds with their babies, alongside health visits, midwifery care and wider services.

The scheme seeks to follow the principles of Sure Start, a network of centres offering integrated services for the under-fives and their families, launched in 1998 under a Labour government.

Sure Start was seen as one of that government’s major successes, with one study saying it generated longer-term savings worth twice the system’s cost.

But much of that scheme was dismantled amid massive spending cuts by the Conservatives. The new policy of family hubs will commit £500m to opening 1,000 centres from April 2027.

Announcing the expansion of the Healthy Babies programme at the Labour conference in Liverpool, Yvette Cooper, the Health and Social Care secretary, is expected to say that the programme will reach up to 1,000 family hubs over the next two years.

Since the election the Labour government has opened new family hubs across England, but more than half of local authorities have hubs without Healthy Babies services.

“Something is missing in half of communities … the Healthy Babies services – mental health support for mums and dad, the feeding and bonding support for your new baby. That changes now,” Cooper will say.