Leader slams £150m boost to social care as ‘short-term fix’
AGOVERNMENT cash boost of £150m for stretched social care services has been criticised as a ‘short-term fix’ by town hall chief Allen Brett.
The council leader has called on the government to sort out adult social care funding once and for all, and accused ministers of ‘giving with one hand and taking with another’.
He spoke out after it emerged that more than a third of the £150m package of extra government support for councils would go to rural shire county councils rather than metropolitan boroughs.
Coun Brett said the announcement, designed to help alleviate pressures in the social care system, was a missed opportunity to tackle the ongoing spending shortfall.
He said the government was failing to deliver a more integrated health and social care funding system, citing the potential £2.3bn national funding gap facing adult social care by 2020.
Last autumn it was announced the health service would receive an extra £1.6bn of spending in 2018-19.
Coun Brett said: “I welcome the government’s overdue recognition that there is a huge shortfall in social care spending, so in that sense the extra cash is a very small step in the right direction.
“In reality this is a shortterm fix rather than a long-term solution. Rochdale’s share of the cash will help, but yet again the government is simply giving with one hand and taking with another. Quite simply, adult social care funding needs to have equal priority with health spending.
“In the last eight years Rochdale council suffered huge cuts in government spending, totalling nearly £200m with more on the way this year. That is simply not sustainable.
“The government has been asleep at the wheel and it’s going to take a bit more than this one off spending get the social care system back on track. I will be writing to the minister seeking urgent answers as to why most of the cash is going to well off county councils.”
Over the past eight years the council has had to make £176m of savings against its planned budget. Between 20182020 the council expects to have to save a further £23m.
The cash injection was announced by Sajid Javid, the Rochdale-born communities secretary, in a written ministerial statement outlining the local government finance settlement for 2018-19.
Mr Javid said: “Having listening to representations since the provisional settlement, I am today announcing a further £150m in 2018-19 for an adult social care support grant.
“This will be taken from anticipated underspend in existing departmental budgets, and will not affect existing revenue commitments made to local government.
“This will be allocated according to relative needs and we will expect to see councils use it to build on their progress so far in supporting sustainable local care markets.”