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 the assessment framework used for commissioning the adult social care resource formula focuses on outcomes.

It is important that the Adult Social Care Relative Needs Formula accurately reflects the relative need for services to ensure funding is allocated to the places that need it most and to enable all local authorities to focus on improving adult social care outcomes.

The Department commissioned independent academics at the Adult Social Care Research Unit to develop an update to the current Adult Social Care Relative Needs Formula. This update reflects a more up to date assessment of relative adult social care need in England and is being consulted on as part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Local Government Funding Reform consultation. The Adult Social Care Research Unit’s research report is available at the following link:

https://ascru.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2025_06_16_Revision-of-ASC-RNF-2024.pdf