A record 1.23 million UK workers are now on zero-hour contracts, with health and social care ranking as the second-highest sector at 16.1% of the workforce employed without guaranteed hours.  This reliance on flexible staffing has allowed care providers to manage fluctuating demand and control costs, but the Employment Rights…

One in four young people in England are leaving school without HPV vaccination, which means thousands of teenagers and young adults under your care may be unprotected against cancers that a single vaccine dose could prevent.  Uptake has fallen from pre-pandemic levels of 90% to just 75.5% for girls and…

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 creates legal liability for care providers that many don’t fully understand until they’re facing prosecution, investigation, or trying to defend themselves after an incident. The Act places a duty on employers to ensure “so far as is reasonably practicable” the health, safety,…

Part L Building Regulations control how buildings use energy and how much heat they lose. For care home providers, these regulations determine what heating systems you can install, how well your building must be insulated, and what ventilation you need providing. The 2026 update introduces changes that will fundamentally affect…

Around 60 per cent of Attendance Allowance applications are rejected every year. Not because the people applying are ineligible. Not because the benefit is hard to qualify for. But because the form was filled in badly, the person described their best days instead of their worst, or nobody helped them…

A measuring tool invented in 1832 by a Belgian mathematician has been used by the NHS for decades to decide whether someone is a healthy weight, overweight, or obese. It was never designed for clinical use. It was created to describe the average person in a population. Yet the Body…

For more than 60 years, metformin has been the most prescribed drug for type 2 diabetes in the world. Cheap, reliable, and backed by decades of clinical evidence, it has been handed to hundreds of millions of people as the standard first-line treatment for managing blood sugar. Doctors knew it…

In January 2026, the World Health Organization removed the United Kingdom from its list of countries with measles elimination status. The decision followed 2,911 laboratory-confirmed measles cases in England in 2024, the highest annual figure since 2012, and a child’s death in Liverpool in 2025. It was the second time…

On 13 March 2026, the UK Health Security Agency began receiving notifications of a cluster of invasive meningococcal disease cases in Canterbury, Kent. Within five days, the outbreak had been declared a national incident. Two young people had died. Twenty cases were confirmed or under investigation. More than 30,000 students…

Carer’s Allowance is the main state benefit for unpaid carers in the UK. It is worth £86.45 per week from 7 April 2026, paid to people who provide at least 35 hours of care per week to someone who receives a qualifying disability benefit. On paper, it is a straightforward…