The National Care Forum and Care England have responded to the publication of the Local Government Finance Settlement.
Measures relating to adult social care include £5.9bn being provided through the Social Care Grant – an increase of £880m compared to 2024-25 – plus £2.6bn distributed through the Local Authority Better Care Grant, and £1.05bn for adult social care distributed via the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (MSIF).
NCF CEO Vic Rayner said: “While we welcome the additional funding of £880m for adults and children’s social care, this won’t cover the increased costs for adult social care providers resulting from the Autumn Budget. The costs of the Budget for social care have been estimated by Nuffield Trust to be £2.8bn.
“Care and support providers have told us very clearly about the looming impact of the additional employer NICs contributions and the increase in the National Living Wage. Key findings from a survey of care providers carried out by the Care Provider Alliance laid bare the impact. Seventy three per cent of respondents said they would need to refuse to accept new packages of care from councils or the NHS and 64 per cent would need to let staff go. Clearly the scale of the financial challenge facing adult care and support providers is simply much greater than the additional funding announced … £880m for both adult and children’s social care is not going to provide sufficient funding to enable local authorities to meet the increased costs that providers face as a direct result of the Budget.
“This inability to recognise and understand the importance of care and support in millions of people’s lives every day is incredibly disappointing and this settlement will do little to address the urgent issue of unmet need. There are an estimated 418,029 people currently waiting for a care and support assessment to allow them to stay at home, living well with choice and independence. This figure only represents people that Local Authorities are aware of.
“Social care is a public service employing 1.6 million people which contributes £68.1bn annually into the English economy and keeps people in work and contributing to the economy while also maintaining the country’s physical and mental wellbeing. Its role in helping the government achieve its missions is self-evident but despite the rhetoric we have heard from minsters, there exists a lack of understanding, or an unwillingness to make social care central to policy making.
“We join other voices in urging Treasury officials to exempt social care and support providers from these increases in employers NIC, or alternatively to fully fund the increased costs. This must be followed up at the June spending review with significant investment in the longer-term reform of adult social care. Only by taking these steps can the government turn rhetoric into action, prove themselves willing to tackle the difficult issues and transform social care for the millions who depend on it and work tirelessly to provide it.”
Professor Martin Green OBE, chief executive of Care England commented: “[The] Local Government Settlement highlights the government’s continued failure to prioritise adult social care. While the announcement of additional £880m funding is welcome, it falls far short of addressing the scale of the crisis. There is a real risk that local authorities, under immense financial pressure, will be left with no choice to divert funds they may have otherwise allocated to social care to other areas. This is not the fault of local authorities who will be forced to make up to £1.4bn of savings in 2025-26 from Adult Social Care Budgets according to the ADASS, but rather a direct consequence of the government’s chronic underfunding of both the adult social care sector and local government budgets.
“Every delay, every cut, every ignored plea has real consequences for real people. It’s time for the government to stop turning a blind eye; this is no longer a hypothetical crisis. This is happening right now, and the government must act before it is too late.”
