Official Statistics

Survey of adult carers in England, 2025 to 2026: methodology

Published 24 September 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

This methodology relates to the survey of adult carers in England (SACE), which is a biennial national survey conducted by councils with adult social services responsibilities (CASSRs) in England every 2 years. Note that CASSRs will be referred to as ‘local authorities’ throughout this document.

This document presents the background and methodology of SACE 2025 to 2026.

Local authorities with an eligible population of at least 150 unpaid carers are required to carry out this survey every 2 years.

The survey seeks the opinions of unpaid carers known to their local authority to understand the impact of caring responsibilities on their quality of life. This enables greater understanding of the impact of carer support services and can inform service development. The survey asks carers questions about their caring responsibilities around the following themes:

• information about the carer
• information about the cared-for person
• impact of caring and quality of life
• quality of any information and advice received
• carer’s needs and experiences of support
• carers’ involvement in arranging services for the cared-for person

SACE findings were previously published by NHS England.

Background and relevance

Unpaid carers are an important policy area. The September 2025 notice from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) informed local authorities that they should undertake a survey of carers. The survey is also listed on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) single data list as one of the data returns local authorities are required to submit under current arrangements.

The Care Act 2014 gives carers new rights to support and puts them on an equal basis with the people they are caring for. It allows for provisions such as simplifying carers’ assessments, giving carers a legal right to support if they are eligible and setting the minimum level at which carers become eligible for support.

Initially piloted in 2009 to 2010, the survey provides information on carers’ experiences of the services they received and whether these services improved carers’ ability to care and live a life outside this role. Full survey data is available from 2012 to 2013.

The survey is the most significant pool of personal outcome information for carers receiving support from local authorities. It’s an important resource for accounting for what has been achieved for local carers, supporting local services for carers and enabling local authorities to make better choices about support for carers. It investigates whether services received by carers have helped them in their caring role and their life outside of caring and seeks their perception of services provided to the person in receipt of care.

The main purpose of the survey is to provide assured, benchmarked local data on outcomes to support local services in considering ways of improving outcomes in a very challenging financial climate. The survey is constructed so that an individual outcome can be disaggregated into constituent groups. This means that, as well as providing an overall quality of life index, the survey provides intelligence on whether specific groups experience better outcomes, whether services are meeting all outcome needs, and in time, the value added by social services.

Data from the survey is used to populate 5 of the measures in the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF). These measures are:

• 1C - carer-reported quality of life (questions 7 to 12)
• 1E - satisfaction of carers with social services (question 4)
• 3B - proportion of carers who report they have been included or consulted in discussions about the person they care for (question 19)
• 3C - proportion of carers who find it easy to find information about support (question 17)
• 5A - proportion of carers who reported that they had as much social contact as they would like (question 11)

More uses of SACE data are given in the accompanying data quality report.

Methodology

See the guidance for the survey of adult carers in England 2025 to 2026 for all materials and guidance provided to local authorities for this year’s survey.

Local authorities are asked to send questionnaires to a random sample of eligible unpaid, informal carers.

Eligible population

Local authorities selected a date between 1 July and 30 September 2025 to extract the list of the eligible population. The eligible population includes unpaid carers known to the local authority who are:

• aged 18 and over
• caring for someone aged 18 and over

From the date the population data is extracted, carers must have either:

• received carer support at any point in the last 12 months
• been assessed in the last 12 months but received no direct support, irrespective of whether their cared-for person received respite care

See the ‘Survey of adult carers in England, 2025 to 2026: data quality report’ on the Survey of adult carers in England: 2025 to 2026 report page for the size of the 2025 to 2026 eligible population, sample size and response rates.

The eligible population is the same as previous years and, despite the shift from short and long term (SALT) to client level data (CLD) collection, the population should still align with the previous SALT LTS003 table 1 cohort.

In 2016 to 2017, the eligible population changed so that, in addition to including carers that have had a carer’s assessment or review from the local authority in the 12 months prior to the survey taking place, carers who have not been assessed or reviewed during the previous 12 months are now included. Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities have a duty to ensure relevant information and advice is made available to carers. This provides a clear rationale for including carers who were not assessed or reviewed during the previous 12 months, but who the local authority reports are in receipt of support.

Conducting the survey

Local authorities are provided with detailed survey guidance and with survey materials such as questionnaires, forms and letters. There are large print and translated versions of the materials. The questionnaires are also provided as an interview script so that carers who request an interview can participate in the survey.

The model questionnaires and interview scripts are generic and contain sections that are customised by local authorities. Local authorities may include additional questions or free-text boxes for local research purposes - any proposals to do so are subject to approval from DHSC.

The survey uses data from a sample of carers to make inferences (or estimates) about the whole eligible population. These estimates are subject to a degree of uncertainty that can be expressed as a margin of error. The margin of error of an estimate is related to the proportion of the population that responds to the survey - as this proportion increases, the margin of error decreases. Therefore, the margin of error can be reduced by increasing the survey sample size and/or response rate. Local authorities are required to select a sample such that the survey results have a margin of error of less than 5 percentage points. See the data quality report for the size of the 2025 to 2026 eligible population, sample size and response rates.

The selected sample is checked for carers who should not be sent a survey, for example if:

• the person has stopped being a carer
• the carer or the cared for person has died
• the carer has been hospitalised or is involved in an open safeguarding alert or investigation

In addition, a survey is not sent if the carer is in active dispute with the local authority and it is felt that sending them a questionnaire could be perceived as being unduly provocative or insensitive. Carers removed from the sample for any of these reasons are replaced with other randomly selected eligible carers.

Local authorities may run all or some of these checks at different points in the process once the eligible population is extracted. Some will identify and remove carers who cannot be selected to receive a questionnaire before determining the sample, thereby creating a discrete sample frame from which the sample is drawn. Some carers may be identified and removed after the sample has been drawn, in which case they are replaced with other carers on a like-for-like basis. Carers who are removed from the sample are still counted as members of the eligible population. The guidance outlines the reasons carers should not receive a questionnaire.

Local authorities remove any identifiable data items before submitting their completed data return to DHSC. DHSC is not able to identify any individual carers in the data.

The fieldwork period is during October and November. The survey is conducted mainly using a postal questionnaire. Local authorities can use a face-to-face or telephone interview if requested by the carer.

One reminder letter is sent to each non-respondent. The returned questionnaires are then coded onto the data return, and the resulting data sets are returned to DHSC for validation and analysis through the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS).

Weighting, margins of error and significance testing

Weights are applied to ensure that the survey results accurately represent the eligible population at regional and national level. The standard formula for the variance of estimates in a stratified sample design is used.

The weight for each stratum reflects the number of eligible individuals in that stratum relative to the total eligible population across all strata.

A standard formula is used for the calculation of a margin of error for the estimate of a proportion from a sample survey. This formula uses the eligible population size, sample size and sample proportion to calculate the margin of error and assumes that the sample size is reasonably large. The margin of error is calculated at the 95% confidence interval. Margins of error are given in the data quality tables.

The variance is then calculated using the weighted results from each stratum. This variance is the main value needed to determine the 95% confidence interval for an estimate.

The 95% confidence interval is calculated by taking the estimate and adding and subtracting approximately 1.96 times the square root of the variance of that estimate. This provides a confidence interval around the estimate. 

Significance testing

Confidence intervals are used to establish whether any changes to estimates over time were statistically significant. Where confidence intervals do not overlap, the difference is deemed statistically significant. The time series data denotes where changes are statistically significant.

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