The number of people suffering from dementia in Britain has been calculated at 700,000 in a ground-breaking new report that found the cost of their care is £17 billion a year.

The number of sufferers is projected to increase to more than one million by 2025 and to 1.7 million in 2050 as the population ages. Experts say any cure for the condition will be many years off, too late to help the hundreds of thousands of people currently in their thirties and forties who are on course to develop dementia.

The study, the first to accurately calculate the number of sufferers and the cost of looking after them, was conducted by the London School of Economics and the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London.

More than one third of the £17 billion cost comes in lost income and tax revenue from carers who stop working or cut back their hours to look after their loved ones. Healthcare, drugs, social care and accommodation, in care homes and in the community, make up the remaining two thirds.

Economists say it is difficult to project the full cost of treating dementia in the future because they cannot forecast how many families will be willing to provide care for sufferers at home. However, they say the costs just of medical treatment and social services for sufferers will treble.

Despite the prevalence of the condition, there is no national plan for treatment and care and a postcode lottery determines which sufferers receive help. The provision of drugs is particularly poor. Britain is in the bottom third of the European Union league table on providing dementia drugs. France, Germany and other equivalent-sized economies are all in the top third.

That position is unlikely to improve after the controversial decision last year by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to ban drug treatments for patients in the early stages of dementia, a decision that is being challenged in court by the Alzheimer’s Society.

The society, which commissioned the new report, said that the Government was doing nothing to plan for a looming crisis. Neil Hunt, chief executive of the society, said: “We are arguing that as a nation we are singularly failing to address a very major health and social care issue that is already costing the country a very large amount of money.” More drug therapy would delay the onset of the condition, the society believes, and save money in terms of the very intensive care required in moderate and severe cases.

1 in 5

The proportion of people aged over 80 who suffer from dementia

Source: London School of Economics and Kings College, London

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