Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what additional capacity they estimate will be required to care for the elderly population over the next 10 years; what assessment has been made of the current capacity in residential, nursing home and domiciliary care; and what measures are in place to ensure the provision of capacity to meet needs.

Social care is a means tested service. The Care Act 2014 requires that local authorities must assess any adult who appears to have a care and support need. If a person has eligible care needs and meets the means test criteria the local authority must arrange a package of care. The latest available data suggests that:

- 200,000 packages of short term care were provided in 2015/16 by local authorities; and

- 400,000 elderly people were receiving long term care funded by their local authority on the 31 March 2016

The Personal Social Services Research Unit estimates that this number will increase to 500,000 by 2025, and 590,000 by 2030. These demand projections cover long term care only.

The Government continues to monitor the capacity of the social care system and although there is inevitable churn, bed capacity has remained broadly stable - 460,664 beds in 2010 to 459,874 now.

Commissioning adult social care is the responsibility of local authorities who have duties to meet the needs of eligible people in their area who are entitled to state-funding, and to facilitate an effective market for everyone needing care so they have choice. Local authorities engage with their pool of care providers to encourage changes in capacity where it is needed. These duties were set out in the Care Act 2014.

The Department published statutory guidance for the Care Act to support local authorities in their market shaping duties, including commissioning.

The Department has worked with Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the Local Government Association, the care sector and other partners to produce a wide range of guidance and support about commissioning, market shaping and contingency planning. We have brought this together in an online hub called Adult Social Care Market Shaping, which is an online only resource widely available to people and organisations including local authorities, service users, and care providers.