Stockport hospice chief executive calls Budget a ‘lost chance’ to address funding crisis for the sector

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive at Heald Green’s Moya Cole Hospice, has welcomed the government’s commitment towards palliative and end-of-life care. However, she argues that the government passed up a chance to address the funding crisis in the hospice sector in yesterday’s budget.

The hospice sector across the UK has been struggling with future sustainability and forward planning with only, on average, one third of hospice funding coming from the NHS, requiring hospices to rely instead on public funding for decades.

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive at Moya Cole Hospice, explained:

“With the persistent rise in the cost of living and the change in the way people live their day-to-day lives, the current funding model is an increasingly unsustainable way of keeping hospice doors open to the public. 

“Moya Cole Hospice made the difficult decision two years ago to reduce our beds by 20%. This was a necessary move in order to secure funding for the future. Hospices across the country have also had no choice but to make such difficult decisions, as, year on year, more hospice beds are closing, or services are being cut. According to Hospice UK, 380 beds in hospices across the UK are currently not being used, up from 300 in 2024. This is a worrying trend considering the rise in population and the fact that people are now living longer with more complex needs. We need to be providing more hospice beds to meet the growing demand, not taking them out of the system and putting even more pressure on an overstretched NHS. 

“Although the Minister did not announce additional financial support for the hospice sector, he did share a new Modern Service Framework (MSF) specifically for palliative and end-of-life care, which is integral to the delivery and success of the newly published NHS 10-year plan. The shift from hospital to community will enable the government to support ICBs (Integrated Care Boards) with more effective strategic commissioning tailored to the population it serves, and hospices are fundamental to that shift. The MSF will be published in spring 2026 and will provide the direction of travel for future sustainability.”

Highlighting the importance of work hospices do in providing care, Moya Cole Hospice shared one story of a resident at its Little Hulton site.

In April 2021, Nicholas Darbyshire, a then 24-year-old, had a seizure that left him with catastrophic brain injuries that he couldn’t recover from. His mum, Steph, did not want him to remain in hospital as it was too clinical. 

Steph and her family made the difficult decision to admit Nicholas into Moya Cole Hospice in Little Hulton following a conversation with the hospice team on how they would care for her son. Steph described her first reaction to the hospice: “I thought of a hospice as being somewhere depressing and horrible, and I was really sceptical… I was so surprised at how bright, how homely it felt.” 

The nurses at the hospice told Steph to bring in any of Nicholas’s personal items to make his room feel homely. She knew he always loved fairy lights, but felt that they would be too much to bring in. The next day, she visited Nicholas. A nurse had found a massive vase containing twigs that had fairy lights all around it. They stayed in his room from that day until the day he died. 

After Nicholas died, Steph recalled the flowers that were placed on his bed. And she described the number of people in the hospice that checked in on her as astonishing. “A lady who used to clean his room came up to me and said that he was an amazing young man. ‘How can you tell? He doesn’t communicate,’” Steph said. 

 “It’s just his aura,” the cleaner replied. 

Steph said she can’t thank the hospice enough for what they did for her son, and how they did it with such compassion. Moya Cole Hospice was not just there to care for Nicholas at the end of his life; we were there for the entire Darbyshire family, Nicholas’s loved ones and friends, and we are still here for them today. It is compassionate care like Nicholas’s story that we are putting at risk by not having a reformed funding model for end-of-life care. 

Rachel McMillan concluded:

“Now more than ever, we need an overhaul on the way in which the hospice sector is funded. Although the funding crisis was not addressed in the budget, Moya Cole Hospice sees this commitment from the government as an encouraging step in the right direction. We are eager to continue to work with our ICB colleagues and wider health and social care colleagues to ensure hospices are funded appropriately to enable them to continue to deliver the specialist palliative and end-of-life care people deserve for future generations.”