Home Care in Reigate, Surrey

Our office is on Lewisham High Street, about 70 minutes by train from Reigate station. That is too far to run daily visits from, so for a Reigate address we offer live-in care, once we have a carer free for your start date. A visiting carer is only possible if one of ours happens to live nearby, and we check that against your postcode before saying yes. The rest of this page is a plain guide to arranging care in Reigate, whoever ends up providing it.

Three councils' worth of help, and a change in 2027

Care arrangements in Reigate are split between organisations, and it saves time to know which does what:

• Surrey County Council runs adult social care: needs assessments, carers' assessments, reablement, direct payments and occupational therapy.
• Reigate & Banstead Borough Council handles housing, the means test for disabled facilities grants, a subsidised handyperson service and three community centres.
• The NHS here is NHS Surrey and Sussex Integrated Care Board. East Surrey Hospital is the acute hospital, and community nursing is run by First Community Health and Care.

From 1 April 2027 a new unitary council, East Surrey Council, takes over all council services in Reigate and Banstead, Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Mole Valley and Tandridge. Until that date the county and borough councils carry on as normal, so keep using the contacts below.

Asking Surrey for a needs assessment

The front door is Surrey's online social care self-assessment. You will need an email address, a phone number and the GP's details. If filling in a form is the obstacle, ring the Information and Advice team on 0300 200 1005 (9am to 5pm, weekdays), use the online chat, or text 07527 182 861 if you are deaf or hard of hearing. Out of hours, for an emergency, the duty team is on 01483 517 898.

If the assessment finds eligible needs, a financial assessment follows. Surrey states that your home is not taken into account if you choose to get support at home; it only comes into play for a move to residential care. Funded support can be taken as a direct payment, paid monthly into a prepaid account with a debit card, and you can use it for all or part of the support in your plan. Our paying for care guide covers the national rules.

Who lives alone in Reigate

The 2021 Census shows why care at home comes up so often in the town. In the central Reigate ward, 458 residents were aged 85 or over, 4.3% of the population, against 2.8% across Reigate and Banstead. The same ward had 704 households of one person aged 66 or over, 15.4% of all households there; the borough figure is 12.3%. Around a third of the ward's homes are flats, purpose-built or converted, a higher share than in the wards to the south.

Living alone is where a plan matters most. Nobody notices a missed meal or a bad night, and a fall can go unseen until morning. Those are the gaps a live-in carer covers, and also what the borough's alarm service and a good neighbour can partly cover.

Hills, stairs and adapting the house

Reigate climbs towards Reigate Hill and Colley Hill, and plenty of its houses have the only bathroom upstairs. When the stairs stop being safe, the usual answers are a stairlift, a level-access shower or a bed moved downstairs. Larger changes are paid for through a disabled facilities grant, and the route in Reigate runs like this:

1. Contact Surrey County Council's social care team first. For adults in this part of the county that is the East 1 Connect 2 Community Team, on 01737 737 330.
2. An occupational therapist visits, assesses and recommends the adaptations.
3. Reigate & Banstead Borough Council means-tests the application and decides the grant works.
4. Millbrook Healthcare, the borough's home improvement agency, can draw up plans, arrange contractors and supervise the job. Work must not start before formal approval.

Smaller jobs go through the borough's Handy Person Service, also run by Millbrook, for people over 60 or disabled: grab rails, handrails, key safes and minor repairs, at subsidised rates. A key safe is worth fitting before any carer starts, so they can get in if the person can't reach the door. For alarms, the borough uses Mole Valley Life (01372 204500), which answers lifeline calls at any hour.

Coming home from East Surrey Hospital

East Surrey Hospital is on Canada Avenue, on the far side of Redhill. Metrobus 420 and 460 run there from Reigate, and TfL's planner puts the trip at roughly half an hour. The hospital's Let's Get You Home programme means staff should start talking about the discharge plan early, usually 24 to 48 hours after admission. Longer-term needs are often assessed after the person is home, which Surrey calls Discharge to Assess.

Surrey may offer free, therapy-led reablement for anything from a few days up to six weeks. Its own page notes that most people don't need the full six weeks. If ongoing care is needed after that, a needs assessment and financial assessment follow. A family carer can ask a nurse for a referral to Action for Carers' Hospital Carer Support Advisor at East Surrey, who helps with discharge planning and with talking to ward staff.

NHS care at home in east Surrey

First Community Health and Care, a staff-owned social enterprise with its head office in Redhill, provides NHS community services across east Surrey. Its district nurses see people who are housebound and can't get to the surgery, and patients or carers can refer themselves on 01737 775450; the team aims to triage calls within four hours during working hours. It also runs falls prevention, an intermediate care team for short spells of ill health, and an urgent community response that aims to keep people out of hospital. The GP can refer you, and for district nursing you can refer yourself.

Company, lunch and a day out

• Woodhatch Community Centre on Whitebeam Drive (RH2 7LS) is one of the borough's three council-run centres, open 9am to 4pm on weekdays, with lunch cooked in house every weekday. Call 01737 221 030.
• Age Concern Merstham, Redhill & Reigate, a local charity for people over 55, runs Merstham Day Centre, a Men's Shed and a befriending service (01737 645636).
• MHA Communities East Surrey, based at Redhill Methodist Church, runs social groups, outings and volunteer befriending, plus a weekly dementia café at Silvermere on Woodlands Road, Redhill.
• Dementia First, an East Surrey charity in Bletchingley, offers day care for people with a diagnosis and groups for carers (01883 818310).
• U3A Redhill & Reigate suits someone who is still active and wants interest groups.

What we can do in Reigate

A live-in carer moves into the spare room and helps with personal care, medicines, meals, the house and company, with a daily break built in. We start with a free assessment at home and a written care plan. If the street is in a resident permit scheme and a visiting carer will be needed as well, a housebound resident can apply to Surrey for a free carers permit. It is valid in resident bays only, not in the borough's car parks.

Everything our carers can help with →