National Care Forum Members' Briefing 17.11.22
Autumn Statement
Earlier this month, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn Statement. This was quite a large statement with a number of consequences for adult social care reform and wider spending. This should be read with the Chancellor’s previous announcement in October in mind.
It is currently unclear what is happening to the previously announced £5.3bn over three years to implement the People at the Heart of Care White Paper.
See here for the full overview of the Autumn Statement.
Below is the analysis of what it means for Adult Social Care.
Funding for Adult Social Care
As you might expect, there are some smoke and mirrors in this statement which we’ve tried to unpick below. It is worth saying that until we see the Local Government Settlement we won’t know the full picture of what is happening to the wider social care reforms and the £5.4bn announced last year to fund this over three years. There was no mention of this money in this statement other than the expected delay of the Cap on Care Costs by two years until October 2025 - which pushes it beyond the next General Election, and we think, in effect, scraps it.
Funding that was to be used to implement the cap, about £2.2bn of the £5.3bn mentioned above, will be maintained within local government to address current adult social care pressures. This will be allocated at the Local Government Finance Settlement through the Social Care Grant.
An eye-catching announcement off the back of this is that the government will "make available up to" £2.8bn in 2023-24 and £4.7bn in 2024-25 for adult social care and hospital discharge. The key phrase is ‘make available up to’ – the headline figures need unpicking. The government is only providing £1bn of new grant funding in 2023-24 and £1.7bn in 2024-25. The shortfall is being made up by using the money that was to be used for the cap on care costs and by allowing LAs to raise council tax (more on this below). Note that there are some caveats on the new money:
£600m in 2023-24 and £1bn in 2024-25 will be allocated through the Better Care Fund to support discharge from hospital into care settings
£400m in 2023-24 and £680m in 2024-25 will be distributed through a grant ringfenced for adult social care which will also help to support discharge.
They have also announced that £1.3bn in 2023-24 and £1.9bn in 2024-25 will be distributed to LAs through the Social Care Grant and children’s social care. It has been suggested to us that the money that would have gone on fair cost of care may end up funding this.
It is disappointing to see social care treated solely as the discharge arm of the NHS.
As mentioned above the government is also giving LAs additional council tax flexibility by increasing the referendum limit for increases in council tax to 3% per year from April 2023. In addition, local authorities with social care responsibilities will be able to increase the adult social care precept by up to 2% per year. It’s clearly this + the cap on care costs money that is being used to reach the £2.8bn and £4.7bn headline figures being used by the Chancellor. Council Tax is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this statement! As we have said elsewhere, council tax is the worst way to raise the much-needed money for adult social care – or indeed most council services – due to its regressive nature and the very real challenges of raising this revenue in parts of the country which are either very rural or suffer significant economic disadvantage.
In the overview, key policies have been highlighted that you will want to be aware of and which will have an impact on your organisations and workforce. Look at the Autumn Statement documents linked above to see more.