Recommendation 27

We asked the Department and DLUHC what they were doing to ensure that local authorities could deliver charging reform alongside system reform, with all the other pressures on them. The Department told us one of the reasons for delaying charging reform had been local authority capacity given other pressures on them and that, before giving a new chunk of complicated work alongside all the other things they had to do, it would want to be sure they could do it well.70 DLUHC told us that it was working closely with local authorities to ensure they had capacity do all the critical things going through them, including reforms to children’s services which it said was also a major system reform. We heard that all these programmes were at different stages of development and that DLUHC was working with local authorities to make progress on things like quality and productivity but was not currently sequencing reforms with local authorities to address local pressures and priorities.71 67 Q 79 68 C&AG’s Report, para 3.14 69 Q 80 70 Q 82 71 Qq 82, 95–97 Reforming adult social care in England 19