A Jersey family can be placed into negative equity by the very scheme designed to support them in old age, and nothing in the island's law prevents it. That is the conclusion I reached after researching the Long-Term Care (LTC) scheme, and after a meeting requested by a government representative who wanted to discuss what they described as inaccuracies in material I had previously shared publicly.

I went into that meeting willing to be corrected, and on one point I was. I am setting out here both what I got wrong and what the law, on examination, confirms.

A correction, in the interest of accuracy

During the run up to the Jersey Election on 7th June 2026 I posted to Facebook (Jersey Politics Group) that LTC contributions are paid directly into a Property Bond. That is not how it works, and I want to be clear about it.

The LTC fund is a general fund. Money from LTC contributions and from general taxation goes into it and is used to pay care benefits across the scheme for everyone who qualifies. The Property Bond is separate. It comes into play only in specific circumstances — chiefly when someone cannot fund their care during the waiting period from income or savings. In that situation the outstanding costs can be secured against the value of their home through a Property Bond, registered at the Public Registry as a Social Security Hypothec.

That correction matters for accuracy. It does not, in my view, soften the substance of the concerns. If anything, the closer I looked, the more there was to question.

Registered providers, unregulated fees

Care homes and agencies in Jersey must be registered under the Regulation of Care (Jersey) Law 2014, which sets quality standards. What that law does not do is regulate the fees those providers can charge.

The LTC benefit pays a maximum of £1,516.62 per week for the highest level of care, with standard living costs set at £477.61 per week. Where a home charges above the standard rate — and many do — the shortfall falls to the resident or their family. It comes out of savings, or it goes onto the Property Bond.

In any market where public money flows into a private industry without price control, the documented pattern is that prices rise to absorb what the funder will pay. With a captive market of vulnerable families and no statutory cap on fees, the pressure on costs runs one way: upward. Every year the gap between what the scheme covers and what providers charge can widen, and islanders carry that risk personally.

The waiting period

A homeowner with property worth over £419,000 and savings above £25,000 falls onto what the scheme calls Route B, and faces a waiting period before public contributions begin. The length depends on the assessed level of care: 148 weeks at Level 1, 97 at Level 2, 67 at Level 3 and 53 at Level 4 — from just over a year to almost three.

Throughout that period the care must be funded from income, savings or the home itself. A single person must pay £80,700 before the scheme contributes; for a couple the combined threshold is £121,050. At the highest level, care alone exceeds £1,500 a week before living costs — more than £6,000 a month. For most families, savings do not last long, and the bond follows.

A forensic audit at the worst possible moment

To apply for support, a person must complete a full financial assessment. This is not a short form. It requires a formal valuation of the home, bank statements current and historical, pension and investment records, details of any overseas property, and a declaration of personal items that could be treated as investments.

It goes further. Every gift over £5,000 made in the previous ten years must be declared — money given to children, grandchildren or anyone else — and the value can be counted in the assessment as though the person still held it. If the family home was ever transferred to a relative, and the person carried on living there, its full value can be brought back into the reckoning.

Consider what that means in practice. A woman in her late seventies, married fifty years, whose husband has just been diagnosed with dementia. He handled the family's finances, as was common in their generation. Now he cannot reliably recall the help they gave their daughter at her wedding, or what they gave a grandchild starting university, or where the paperwork is kept. She — caring for him around the clock, frightened and exhausted — is expected to assemble a decade of financial evidence, value items, prove provenance and account for decisions she trusted him to make. If she cannot, the assessment may stall. If she errs, it may be read as concealment. The government's own guidance suggests applicants "seek independent legal advice" — advice that is neither provided nor funded.

This is happening to islanders now.

Interest charged on the home

I raised the question of interest at the meeting, and the representative has gone away to confirm the detail; I will publish their answer when it comes. What the law itself states is set out in the Long-Term Care (Benefits) (Jersey) Order 2014, Article 15(2), available to anyone at jerseylaw.je.

Once a Property Bond is in place, interest is charged at the Bank of England base rate plus 0.5%. With the base rate at 3.75%, that is 4.25% a year — higher than many mortgage rates. It compounds annually on a balance that itself grows as more care is added, and it does not stop until the home is sold or the bond repaid. A family whose savings have run out watches the cost of caring for a loved one accumulate as debt, with the government adding compound interest on top.

No protection against negative equity

This is the point I most want islanders to register, because I do not believe it is widely understood.

Commercial equity-release products in the UK work on a similar principle to the Property Bond: a debt grows against the home with interest and is settled when the property is sold. But UK products meeting Equity Release Council standards must by law carry a No Negative Equity Guarantee — the debt can never exceed the value of the home, and any shortfall is absorbed by the lender. A commercial lender in the UK is not permitted to push a customer into negative equity.

Jersey's Property Bond carries no such protection. I have read the LTC (Benefits) (Jersey) Order 2014 and the Social Security Hypothecs (Jersey) Law 2014. There is no statutory cap, no ceiling, no guarantee that the secured debt cannot exceed the value of the home.

The consequences are not hard to map. A Level 3 resident accrues care and living costs of more than £1,683 a week — roughly £87,500 a year — and a long stay can place several hundred thousand pounds onto the bond before compound interest is added. Where both partners eventually need care, the debt mounts against a single home. And property values move: a fall during a long care period can turn a debt that looked safe into one larger than the home is worth. In each case the estate inherits the shortfall and the family loses the house.

Which raises a question islanders deserve an answer to: why should a Jersey resident accept worse terms from their own government than they would be guaranteed by a regulated commercial lender in London? I put that question at the meeting, and it too has been taken away for a response.

Still paying in, all the while

Throughout all of this, nothing else stops. Income tax — roughly half the LTC fund — continues. The LTC contribution, currently up to 1.5% of assessable income and proposed to rise to 2.5% from January 2027, continues; it is compulsory, assessed on earnings and collected by the tax department, whatever name is attached to it. Pension income above the tax threshold is caught too, so a retired person can be paying the contribution in the very years a spouse is in care and interest is accruing against the home.

You pay in through a working life, again in retirement, and again — through the home — when care is needed. And the law does not guarantee that what you built will be enough to cover what is taken.

Why I am writing this

I am not a politician and have no party to defend. I started looking into this because someone I love is going through it now, and what I found is a system that reads reasonably on paper but places heavy, growing burdens on the people least able to carry them, at the point in their lives when they can least afford to fight.

To anyone who has been through this scheme, or is in it now: you are not alone, and the more openly islanders speak about what it actually does, the harder it becomes to maintain that it is working as intended.

One piece of practical advice from the meeting is worth repeating in capitals: the moment you start paying anything towards care — for a loved one or yourself — KEEP THE RECEIPTS. They matter throughout this process.