Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the demand for, and demographic pressures on, adult social care local authority budgets in order to inform national and local budget planning and further assess the dependencies between health and social care.

Adult social care provides a vital service to millions of people across the country. It is for local authorities to choose how much to spend on social care to meet their duties. We recognise there are pressures on these services, and the Spending Review 2015 as a whole paid particular attention to adult social care services. As a result the 2015 Spending Review provided a package of almost £3.5 billion of support for adult social care by 2019-20.

Following representations from local authorities and care providers that funding is needed sooner, the Provisional Local Government settlement included further measures to tackle these pressures, increasing the potential total funding available for social care during this Parliament.

The Government announced on 15 December that savings from reforms to the New Homes Bonus will be retained in full by local government to contribute towards adult social care, through a new dedicated £240 million Adult Social Care Support Grant in 2017 to 2018, distributed according to relative need. In recognition of the immediate challenges faced in the care market, Councils will be also be granted flexibility to raise the social care precept on council tax by up to 3 per cent next year and the year after, but by no more than 6 per cent over the three years. This could provide a further £208 million to spend on adult social care in 2017 to 2018 and £444 million in 2018 to 2019.