Tory social care funding plans may flounder due to poorly performing councils

By Gavin Cordon22nd May 2017News EnglandAdult Care, Care Homes, General Election, Government / Politics, Home Care, Local Authorities, News England, Social Care

Conservative plans for councils to recoup the care costs of elderly people from their estates after they die may flounder due to poor-performing local authorities, a former pensions minister has warned.

Sir Steve Webb, who was a Liberal Democrat minister in the coalition under David Cameron, said there were wide variations in the way councils used existing “deferred payment” agreements.

Under arrangements introduced in 2015, people living in residential care can ask their local authority to meet their care home bills with the money to be recovered from the later sale of the family home.

The Conservatives are now proposing to extend the arrangements to cover thousands of people receiving care in their own homes – with the costs to be clawed back after they die.

However Sir Steve (pictured), who is now director of policy at Royal London, said responses to Freedom of Information requests to 140 councils in England revealed wide variations in the way they were used.

While some authorities had entered into scores of agreements with local residents, others had not signed a single one, with London councils said to be particularly reluctant to use them.

The councils who had entered into the most agreements were Southampton City Council with 331, followed by Essex County Council with 208 and Middlesbrough Council with 165.

In contrast, 10 authorities – Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Kensington and Chelsea, Haringey, Lewisham, Lambeth, Ealing, Blackburn with Darwen, and Luton – said they had not issued any.

Sir Steve said: “It is clear that there is already a lottery as to whether people facing significant care costs can exercise their legal right to defer their payments under the existing system.

“The Government will need to investigate very quickly why the present system is not working properly, otherwise there is a danger of building a new system on very shaky foundations.”