The Spring Budget 2017 will now be remembered for the chancellor’s 'up the hill and down again' national insurance march, but it did also contain a significant positive for social care. Rob Whiteman’s article, published in the Health Service Journal, and also available on the CIPFA website, explains how that was welcome, and what is needed now.
Since then, details of the allocation of the additional social care funds have become available – see the policy paper. Ten percent is based on the standard national formula derived from the government’s assessment of the need to spend on social care, 90% from the formula introduced for the improved Better Care Fund (IBCF), which is skewed towards those authorities least able to raise funds through the additional social care precept because they have a low tax base.
This confirms that, in practice, the effect of the extra funding is to bring forward the additional money due on a phased basis under the IBCF. CIPFA called for that to happen, as otherwise those low tax base authorities faced a particular squeeze in 2016/17, with limited tax-raising ability but only a small amount of IBCF to offset that.
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Read Rob Whiteman's comments on the Spring Budget.