Recommendation 12

We heard from Ms Wiseman that local government welcomes the additional £533 million boost to funding for substance misuse treatment services provided through the 10-year drug strategy, and that it was good to have it ringfenced. However, Ms Wiseman cautioned that it did not take them back up to previous levels of funding and that wider local government cuts have impacted other services which help people in recovery such as services providing housing and employment support. The additional funding is short- term and covers the three years from 2022–23 to 2024–25. Ms Wiseman confirmed that she did not know whether, after 2024–25, her local authority would still have money to pay for any new staff recruited during these three years.26 Government has also made smaller pots of funding available in these years to help local authorities provide specialist drug and alcohol treatment to people who sleep rough and to prison leavers. The NAO reported that the numbers of people in treatment for alcohol dependency had not yet recovered to 2013–14 levels (90,000), but did increase to 85,000 in 2021–22, 10% more than in 2020–21.27