Extra social care cash 'will not be enough'
ADDITIONAL money promised to councils for adult and children’s social care services will not be enough to make-up for years of government cuts, the council leader has warned.
In a statement to the House of Commons last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid MP, promised an extra £1.5 billion for councils, which the government said must be partly paid for through further council tax increases.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has already warned that council tax cannot provide a long-term solution to social care funding and that some areas of the country, like the borough of Rochdale, are unable to raise as much as others.
The additional money, to help fund vital care services for vulnerable people with high levels of dependency, was revealed as part of the latest spending review into how government departments are funded.
The full implications for us are not yet known and may not be confirmed until December 2019, when the draft settlement is received.
Councillor Allen Brett said: “We welcome any additional funding but I agree with the LGA that this is short-term fix, not a long-term solution. Forcing councils to keep putting council tax up as a way of covering what the government is not providing is not a fair way of solving this crisis.
“While we may be getting a couple of million extra, over £200 million has been taken out of the council over the past nine years. What has become known as the ‘adult care council tax precept’ is a regressive tax that puts the burden on to local people, and disproportionately on less well-off local people. It’s the wrong way round and it needs to be put back the right way.”