Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 1
1
The failure to properly fund children’s and adult social care, especially adult social care, is...
Recommendation
The failure to properly fund children’s and adult social care, especially adult social care, is the single biggest threat facing local government financial resilience. Given that the cost of providing social care consumes between 60% and 70% of the budgets of top-tier councils, a solution to this funding crisis alone could largely restore local government finances. The Government’s current policy of effectively forcing local councils to impose successive above-inflation council tax rises is imposing additional burdens on council tax payers. It is disappointing that the recent Queen’s Speech made so little mention of plans to reform social care funding. We are also concerned about the cuts to more discretionary services arising from councils’ need to prioritise social care provision. We recommend that the Government urgently reform the funding of social care in England. (Paragraph 13) Funding
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Since the start of the pandemic, we have committed over £12 billion in financial support to councils to tackle the impacts of COVID-19, including over £6 billion of un-ringfenced grants (£4.6 billion for 2020/21 and £1.55 billion for 2021/22) which can be used on social care. At a national level, 32% of the additional £6 billion has been allocated to adult social care, equivalent to £1.9 billion and 8.9% has been allocated to children’s social care, equivalent to £521 million. Throughout the pandemic, we have also made available over £2 billion in specific funding for adult social care. This is made up of the £1.49 billion Infection Control Fund, £396 million Rapid Testing Fund and £120 million Workforce Capacity Fund. In addition, in 2021/22 we are providing councils with access to over £1 billion of additional funding for social care, through a £300 million increase to the social care grant, and enabling up to a further £790 million of new funding though a 3 per cent adult social care precept. We are committed to the delivery of world-leading health and social care across the whole of the UK, and our 7 September 2021 announcement marked an important step on the journey to reforming adult social care. We have committed to investing an additional £5.4 billion over three years, which will allow us to begin a comprehensive programme of reform for adult social care. This includes protecting individuals from unpredictable costs and major improvements to the wider social care system in England. We will work with care users, providers, and other partners to co-develop more detail on these plans and publish further detail in a White Paper for reform later this year.