Government figures show that of the 295,000 people receiving residential care, 42 per cent are self-funders paying all their bills and a further 15 per cent pay some contribution towards their care costs.
Industry analyst Laing & Buisson put the average cost of residential care in 2012 to 2013 at more than £27,000 a year, rising to £37,500 a year if nursing care is necessary.
The average stay in residential care is two years, according to Stephen Lowe, group external affairs and customer insight director at Just Retirement, but this is longer for self-funders, in some cases by many years.
In addition, there are about 850,000 people who receive care in their own homes and nearly four in 10 pay all their own costs.
Janet Davies, managing director of Symponia, says live-in care equates fairly closely to care home costs, whereas care calculated on an hourly rate will depend on the circumstances of the person needing the care.
But with charges varying according to location and the standard of care provided, Roger Marsden, head of strategy for at retirement at Aviva, recommends advisers and their clients wanting to get an idea of the cost of care should look at www.Payingforcare.org, which offers a care fees calculator.
The amount spent privately on social care each year is estimated at somewhere between £3.6bn and £6.8bn, he points out.
Local government figures show nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of self-funders of residential care exhaust their resources and fall back on state funding which, in 2011 to 2012, resulted in extra costs to councils of £425m.
