Council tells families to do more for elderly

A COUNCIL facing a £46 million budget black hole has warned that families will have to take more responsibility for elderly relatives as it prepares to strip back services to a bare legal minimum.

The bleak warning from the Conservative-run East Sussex council comes after another Tory authority, Northamptonshire county council, proposed “radical service reductions” to tackle a financial crisis.

East Sussex set out its plans to cut its services to a “core offer” at a meeting last month, according to documents seen by The Guardian.

Minutes from a council cabinet meeting on June 17 – which suggest that the council’s budget deficit could reach £46.3million by 2020-21 – make clear that adult social care will be in the firing line. They say: “Realistically, we are not going to be able to continue to invest in the preventative services that we would wish to. Our community will therefore need to take more responsibility for looking after themselves and each other to keep everyone safe and independent for as long as possible.

“The longer we can keep people out of institutional care, the more money we will have available to support greater numbers of people to keep their independence for longer.”

The council said it would lobby “for the urgent funding the council needs in the next financial year to make services sustainable in the long term and for the removal of those government requirements that would not be our highest priorities.”

This week, Northamptonshire county council leader Matthew Golby warned they would have to decide “what we can realistically provide and how we can help to create resilience in places where the council can no longer step in”.