Government urged to remove care home powers from councils

COUNCILS should lose their powers over care-home funding after failing to support them during the coronavirus crisis, it has been claimed.

The Government has given local authorities £3.2billion in emergency funding, telling them to spend 10 per cent more on social care.

However, Care England, the leading representative body for homes, said it had evidence that fewer than 20 per cent of councils had passed on the amount. It came amid claims that hospitals may have broken the law by sending infected patients to care homes without telling their managers they had the virus. The Care Quality Commission is investigating after being informed of “a few” such incidents which resulted in infections spreading to other residents.

Many councils have only offered care providers a 5 per cent increase, while a handful are accused of giving care providers no extra money at all. Prof Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said it was time the Government took back financial control.

“We are in a national emergency, the Prime Minister has said that care homes are at the top of the agenda and yet there are so many different responses by local areas,” he told Sunday Telegraph. “It just isn’t good enough … my members are not seeing that money in their bank accounts. They need to stop this nonsense. The Government needs to stop this obsession with localisation and take control.”

Andrew Knight, chief executive of Care UK, which runs 122 homes in England and Scotland, backed a centralised approach to funding. “A very large number of councils are not passing on any meaningful support to providers, or are attaching so many conditions to additional funding that the administrative burden is more than already stretched teams can handle,” he said.

A spokesman for Newcastle city council, which has passed on a 5 per cent increase to care providers, said it was “virtually all we can afford”.