CM Local Authorities

Local authorities predicted further cuts to essential services following the Autumn Statement, which saw a further 2% slashed from local authority budgets. The Local Government Association chairman, Sir Merrick Cockell, commented: By the end of this Parliament, local government funding will have fallen by £20bn – a cut of 43%. The next two years will be the toughest yet for people who use and rely on the vital everyday local services that councils provide.

Community Care Market News (News) December 1997 Department of Health (DoH) guidance to local authorities regarding recent legal judgments is inaccurate and...

Community Care Market News (News) October 2000 Whilst the government wants no repeat of last year's NHS winter crisis, care home operators...

Community Care Market News (News) May 2003 Care home operators have called on the National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) to improve communication...

Community Care Market News (News) November 2004 Eight out of ten UK local authorities with the lowest male life expectancy at birth...

A daycare centre for adults with specialist needs formerly operated by Gloucestershire county council before it was closed as part of cut backs made in the spring will reopen this month under the ownership of a community-based support provider.

The adult social care funding gap in the capital will widen to £907m within five years, according to a report by London Councils. However, by working more closely with the NHS, improving procurement and developing new ways to provide social care for older and disabled people, savings of between £240m and £735m could be made to plug the hole. The representative body for London’s 33 local authorities highlights in A Case for Sustainable Funding for Adult Social Care how councils will be forced to spend a higher proportion of their budgets on adult social care. Assuming that the next Comprehensive Spending Review in 2014 brings a 5% cut in local authority budgets, London Councils report predicts that social care and waste collection could account for more than 60% of London boroughs’ budgets by 2020. They currently spend around one third (£2.8bn) of their budgets on adult social care. The analysis does not allow for the implementation of the recommendations of the Dilnot Commission and calculates the funding shortfall would increase to around £1.3bn if they were introduced. London Councils’ executive member for adult services, Cllr Ravi Govindia said: We are calling on the government to decide quickly how to implement the Dilnot recommendations; remove some of the red tape which would make providing adult social care services more efficient and recognise that help will be needed to fill the funding gap as our population ages and needs more care.’

Providing adult social care services in England will soon be unsustainable’ if current budgetary pressures continue, and significant measures are not taken to inject new money into local social care economies and using NHS funding as a sticking plaster’ is doomed to fail.

Community Care Market News (News) November 2003 NHS Boards and Local Authorities in Scotland have been told that they must do more...

Council leaders from the Local Government Association (LGA) have said the winter health crisis should incentivise the government to adequately fund the country’s social care...