Home Care in the City of London

Your council here is the City of London Corporation

The City is the one part of Greater London with no borough council. The City of London Corporation is the local authority, and alongside the Lord Mayor and the markets it runs adult social care, council housing, public health and libraries for the people who live in the Square Mile. So if your mother lives in the Barbican, the team that assesses her is the Corporation's Adult Social Care Team, part of its Department of Community and Children's Services. It is not Islington, Hackney or Tower Hamlets.

The Care Quality Commission now inspects councils as well as care providers. Its assessment of the Corporation's adult social care, published on 15 July 2026, gave an overall result of Good. The report also notes something unusual: the City is formally exempt from the national surveys of care users and unpaid carers, because so few residents meet the criteria. It took part anyway. That is the scale you are dealing with, and it cuts both ways. Social workers tend to know the estates well, but there are fewer local services to choose from than in a big borough.

The City in numbers that matter for care

The 2021 Census counted 8,585 people living in the City, against the hundreds of thousands who come in to work each day. A few figures explain why home care here looks different from the suburbs:

• 1,209 residents were 65 or over, and 121 were 85 or over.
• 494 people aged 66 or over lived on their own, about one household in ten. For them a visiting carer is often the person who notices first when something changes.
• 87% of households live in purpose-built flats. Only about 100 homes in the whole City are houses. Lifts, door entry and landings matter more here than front steps.
• 77% of households have no car. Most older residents get about on foot, by bus or by Tube, so a carer who walks with them keeps a lot of independence intact.

Source: ONS Census 2021 tables for the City of London, via Nomis.

Asking the Corporation for a needs assessment

Anyone living in the City who has care and support needs because of an illness or a physical or mental impairment is entitled to an assessment. There is no online self-assessment form. You phone the Adult Social Care Team on 020 7332 1224 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm) or email adultsduty@cityoflondon.gov.uk, and someone arranges to meet the person. The Corporation says it aims to finish within 28 days and that it can take up to 42. If you disagree with the result, you have two weeks to appeal, as set out on its assessments and appeals page.

Outside office hours, urgent social care matters go to the City and Hackney Emergency Duty Team on 020 8356 8855 or 020 8356 2300. The shared line is a clue to how things are organised: health and out-of-hours services for City residents are planned jointly with Hackney, under NHS North East London.

If forms and phone calls are the hard part, City Advice, run by Toynbee Hall, gives free help with benefits, housing and getting adult social care to anyone who lives in the City or on a City estate (020 7392 2919).

The NHS people a home carer will work alongside

Care at home rarely runs on its own. In the City these are the health services we most often coordinate with, and it helps to know who they are before you need them:

• The GP. The Neaman Practice in Half Moon Court, EC1A, is the only GP surgery inside the City. Plenty of residents are registered just over the boundary instead, which can matter (see the questions below).
• District nurses. Homerton Healthcare's community nursing service visits housebound adults across City and Hackney from 8:30am to 10pm every day. Only a health professional can refer, and there is no overnight service; NHS 111 covers the night. Dressings, injections and catheter care stay with the nurses. Our carers do the personal care and report what they see.
• Memory assessment. The City and Hackney Dementia Service, run by East London NHS Foundation Trust from Felstead Street in Hackney Wick, assesses suspected dementia on a GP referral and then stays involved, with a named professional for the family.
• Palliative care. St Joseph's Hospice in Mare Street runs a community palliative care team that covers the City as well as Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham.

How our carers reach the Barbican, Golden Lane and Portsoken

From our office on Lewisham High Street, carers take a Southeastern train to London Bridge or Cannon Street, or the DLR towards Bank, and walk or catch a bus for the last stretch. We checked TfL's journey planner for a weekday 8am start: about 46 to 49 minutes door to door to the Barbican Centre, 50 to 52 to Golden Lane Community Centre and 47 to 48 to Portsoken. That is closer than much of outer London, which is why the City sits in our visiting area.

Nobody drives. The whole Square Mile is one controlled parking zone (Monday to Friday 7am to 7pm, Saturday 7am to 11am), it is inside the Congestion Charge zone, and there is no carers' or visitor permit for City streets. The Corporation is also consulting, until 2 December 2026, on running charges from 7am to 8pm Monday to Saturday from May 2027. So the honest limit on visits is not distance. It is which carers are free at 7.30am or 9pm on the days you need. We do not have a team based in the City, and we will tell you plainly after the assessment what we can cover.

What a visit can include

Washing, dressing and getting to the toilet; prompting medicines and writing down what was taken; breakfast or a hot evening meal; shopping; and company. In a City flat the practical jobs are often about the building: checking the lift is working before an appointment, keeping the door entry phone within reach, or walking along the Barbican highwalk to the library instead of crossing London Wall. Our pages on personal care, dementia care and the sit-in service say more about each. If visits stop being enough and the flat has a spare room, there is live-in care in the City.

Paying: the Corporation, a direct payment or your own money

The needs assessment is free whatever your savings. If the person is eligible, the Corporation does a financial assessment to work out any contribution. The care can then be arranged by the Corporation or taken as a direct payment, paid into a separate account and managed by the person, a family member, another organisation, or the Corporation's own Direct Payment Service. Plenty of people simply pay privately from the start. We give a written quote once we have seen the home and understood the help needed, never a figure over the phone. Our paying for care guide covers the means test and NHS Continuing Healthcare.

Guides to each part of the City

Each estate raises its own questions, so we have written them up separately: home care in the Barbican (listed flats, concierges and Barts next door), home care on the Golden Lane Estate (small flats and the Tuesday memory cafe) and home care in Aldgate (and whether you are in the City or Tower Hamlets).

Everything our carers can help with →