By Lucy Phillips
21 October 2010
Some £1bn will come from the NHS budget, while another £1bn from cross-government savings will be merged into the local government formula grant.
Osborne said the additional funding would ‘protect the most vulnerable’ and promote joint working between the health service and councils.
But there was mixed reaction to the move, with experts warning that it was not new money and that grant funding for social care had only been earmarked, not ring-fenced.
With councils already grappling with 7% year-on-year cuts, Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK, said: ‘The purported “£2bn additional funding” for social care in fact just replaces cuts [Osborne] is simultaneously making to local government budgets. Over the four-year period covered by the Comprehensive Spending Review, we predict that spending on care will suffer a modest fall in real terms.’
Jennifer Dixon, director of the Nuffield Trust, said that the extra £1bn grant was ‘by no means certain’. She said: ‘The reality is that local authority budgets will be stretched and funds for social care are not ring-fenced.’
Nigel Edwards, acting director of the NHS Confederation, added: ‘We do need to be cautious because the money is not ring-fenced. With severe pressure on council budgets, we are worried that these funds will not get through to the people who need it.’ But he said that the pot of money from the NHS ‘would probably have been spent on this anyway’ but ‘this can now be done in a planned way, rather than in a patient-by-patient haphazard fashion’.
The government’s pledge to protect NHS spending, with real-terms increases every year until 2014, was reiterated in the Spending Review. But health groups warned that the NHS already faced a potent cocktail of financial pressures, including the need to find £20bn of efficiency savings, an ageing population and rising costs of medicines and new technology.
21 October 2010
Chancellor George Osborne promised an extra £2bn of funding for elderly social care by 2014 but doubts have been raised about its impact.
Some £1bn will come from the NHS budget, while another £1bn from cross-government savings will be merged into the local government formula grant.
Osborne said the additional funding would ‘protect the most vulnerable’ and promote joint working between the health service and councils.
But there was mixed reaction to the move, with experts warning that it was not new money and that grant funding for social care had only been earmarked, not ring-fenced.
With councils already grappling with 7% year-on-year cuts, Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK, said: ‘The purported “£2bn additional funding” for social care in fact just replaces cuts [Osborne] is simultaneously making to local government budgets. Over the four-year period covered by the Comprehensive Spending Review, we predict that spending on care will suffer a modest fall in real terms.’
Jennifer Dixon, director of the Nuffield Trust, said that the extra £1bn grant was ‘by no means certain’. She said: ‘The reality is that local authority budgets will be stretched and funds for social care are not ring-fenced.’
Nigel Edwards, acting director of the NHS Confederation, added: ‘We do need to be cautious because the money is not ring-fenced. With severe pressure on council budgets, we are worried that these funds will not get through to the people who need it.’ But he said that the pot of money from the NHS ‘would probably have been spent on this anyway’ but ‘this can now be done in a planned way, rather than in a patient-by-patient haphazard fashion’.
The government’s pledge to protect NHS spending, with real-terms increases every year until 2014, was reiterated in the Spending Review. But health groups warned that the NHS already faced a potent cocktail of financial pressures, including the need to find £20bn of efficiency savings, an ageing population and rising costs of medicines and new technology.
