Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will carry out an assessment after the November Spending Review of local authorities' capacity to meet their new duties under the Care Act 2014 following changes to local authority funding.

Funding decisions for 2016/17 onwards, including on adult social care, are subject to the forthcoming Spending Review.

Officials in the Department and across government are working hard to understand pressures on the care system and will consider adult social care expenditure and the future demand as part of this process. This includes ongoing Care Act pressures.

We will continue to review and monitor implementation of the Care Act which includes a series of stocktakes of local authority readiness and the latest, from June 2015, demonstrates an overall positive picture on implementation. It details:

- Councils’ confidence in their ability to deliver the Care Act Reforms in 2015/16 remains high, with 99% very or fairly confident.

- 89% of councils say that they are ‘on track’ with their implementation. The remaining 11% report themselves as only slightly behind.

There are two further local authority stocktakes planned for the remainder of the financial year which will monitor the progress on implementing change. It is our intention to repeat the surveys next year to continue monitoring progress, subject to agreement with local government.

The Department will also commission a piece of research to evaluate and inform implementation of the Care Act 2014. The research will focus on knowing more about how the Act is being implemented locally and to see how effectively the Act is achieving its underlying aims.