Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure that upper tier local authorities can meet additional demand for social care services in (a) Shropshire and (b) England in winter 2024-25.

On 17 September, I wrote to all local authorities, setting out priorities for improving service resilience across social care this winter. The letter emphasises the importance of close partnership working and joint planning between local authorities, the NHS and community partners. Local authorities are expected to have business continuity plans in place for a range of risks, including for localised disruptions caused by adverse winter weather.

The Department funds Partners in Care and Health, delivered by the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, and the Social Care Institute for Excellence, to provide a support offer that helps local authorities tackle operational challenges, including during winter.

Under the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (MSIF), local authorities must submit an adult social care capacity plan that provides assurance that plans are in place to meet estimated local demand for different types of long-term care services, with a focus on winter. These were submitted to the department in June 2024. The member’s local authority, Shropshire, submitted their 2024/25 capacity plan which is currently undergoing processing and quality assurance.

MSIF is designed to support increased adult social care capacity, improve market sustainability, and enable local authorities to make improvements to adult social care services. Shropshire has been allocated just over £6 million of MSIF funding in 2024/25 to support these aims.