Wandsworth's KITE reablement team costs £148 an hour, against about £25 from care firms. Cabinet is handing its work to them: 19 posts go, £1.15m saved.
Wandsworth Council is to close KITE, its own team that helps people get back on their feet at home after hospital or illness. Cabinet approved the move on Monday 12 October. The work will pass to private care providers the council already pays.
The reason is cost. The council’s paper says an hour of KITE support costs around £148. Commissioned providers charge approximately £25 an hour, and they must pay the London Living Wage and travel costs. That is almost six times the price for what the paper calls “comparable quality and outcomes”.
The figures are in Cabinet Paper 26-204. The decision is recorded in the council’s statement of decisions for the meeting.
The quick answer
- What: KITE (Keep Independent Through Enablement), the council’s in-house reablement team, is to close.
- Who takes over: the commissioned care providers that already deliver around 80% of reablement in the borough.
- Jobs: 19 posts deleted, affecting 27 people.
- Money: an estimated £1.15m a year saved, against one-off redundancy costs of up to £700,000.
- When: staff consultation runs to January 2027, the switch happens from February to April 2027.
- For residents: reablement stays free for up to six weeks. Who visits you may change.
What KITE does
Reablement is short-term help, normally for up to six weeks. Workers help people relearn everyday tasks after an illness, a fall or a stay in hospital, rather than doing those tasks for them. The aim is to get people independent again and avoid long-term care.
The council’s KITE page says KITE supports residents living in the west of the borough. It names two commissioned providers that work alongside it: Aspire Care Services and Eleanor Nursing and Social Care.
The paper says KITE and the commissioned providers are all rated Good by the Care Quality Commission. It puts the value of reablement at about £6m a year in long-term care costs avoided.
The numbers in the paper
In 2025/26 the borough delivered around 46,700 hours of reablement. KITE delivered 9,300 of them, about 20%. The remaining 37,400 or so came from commissioned providers.
The paper sets out the money like this:
| Per year | |
|---|---|
| KITE budget, 2026/27 | £1.6m |
| Cost of buying the same hours from providers | about £450,000 |
| Estimated saving | £1.15m |
| One-off redundancy costs | up to £700,000 |
The saving depends on the final rates agreed with providers. The paper says officers will decide later how the redundancy costs are met.
It also says earlier reviews and improvement work “have not closed this cost gap”. Officers looked at four options. They rejected keeping KITE as it is, a joint service with an NHS provider, and turning KITE into a coordination team that no longer gives care directly.
What happens to the staff
The council’s Assistant Director of Human Resources says the change means the net deletion of 19 posts, affecting 27 people. The paper says many have given long service. It promises formal consultation with staff and trade unions, individual meetings, help with redeployment and, if needed, redundancy.
The council has taken outside legal advice on TUPE, the rules that can move staff to a new employer with their jobs. That advice says TUPE is “unlikely to apply”. The work would be spread across many providers rather than transferred to one, so staff would not move with it. The paper accepts that only an employment tribunal could settle the point for certain.
The full equality assessment is being kept internal. The paper says the staff group is small enough that individuals could be identified.
The timetable
The paper gives these dates:
- October 2026 to January 2027: consultation with staff and trade unions
- January 2027: final decision on the delivery model
- February to April 2027: handover to commissioned providers
- From April 2027: contract monitoring and a review of residents’ experience
What it means for you
If you or a relative are offered reablement after a hospital stay, nothing changes this autumn. KITE keeps running while the consultation goes on.
From spring 2027 the support will come from a care company working to a council contract rather than from council staff. The paper says providers have told the council they have room to take on KITE’s share of the work.
Reablement stays free. The national charging rules say councils must not charge for reablement for the first six weeks. The council’s reablement service page says support usually lasts a few days to four weeks, and can be extended by up to two more weeks.
If the change worries you, your ward councillor is the person to tell before the final decision in January. The same Cabinet meeting also sent changes to council tax support out to consultation.
Sources
- Reablement Services, Cabinet Paper 26-204 (Wandsworth Council, 12 October 2026): costs per hour, hours delivered, budget, saving, redundancy costs, posts, TUPE advice, options and timetable.
- Cabinet statement of decisions, 12 October 2026 (Wandsworth Council): the decision as approved.
- Keep Independent Through Enablement (Wandsworth Council): what KITE does, the west of the borough, the two named providers.
- Wandsworth Reablement Service (Wandsworth Council): who reablement is for and how long it lasts.
- Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, regulation 3: reablement free for the first six weeks.
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