Councils will be left with little choice but to impose inflation-busting council tax increases next spring. In July, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which I chair, produced a report which stated that the failure to properly fund adult social care was the single biggest threat to the financial resilience of local councils. Councils will be aware of this reality, with the costs of providing social care consuming between 60% and 70% of the budgets of top-tier local authorities. Our report was clear that the Government urgently needed to reform the funding of social care in England. The Government finally stepped forward with the Plan for Health and Social Care. But, looking behind the headlines and into the detail of the plans, it is all too clear that councils won't be getting the funding they require to deliver the quality and scale of adult social care that people need. The National Insurance hike - sold as a bold solution to the decades-long problem in adult social care - raises £36bn over the next three years, but much of the revenue is initially dedicated to cutting waiting lists in the NHS.
展开▼
