Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his department is taking to ensure that domiciliary care is available to isolated rural residents where care contractors do not deem it commercially viable to provide services to them due to the travel time involved.

Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are required to shape their local markets to ensure that a range of high quality, sustainable, person-centred care and support services are available to meet the needs of the local population. The Government has made £1.4 billion available to support local authorities to move towards paying providers a fair cost of care. Local authorities will be required to conduct an exercise to understand the costs of providing care in the local area. These exercises should reflect geographic variation in costs, such as staff pay and travel time.

We have also announced up to £30 million to support local areas to implement new models of care, supporting innovation in delivery, investment, market-shaping and commissioning practices for care.