A number of public statements by the LibDem leader and others recently have said that excess spending in Adult Social Care is jeopardising the Council's financial stability.
Can you explain which areas of Adult Social Care have overspent the budget agreed by Council and by how much year to date?
Minutes:
A number of public statements by the Lib Dem leader and others recently have said that excess spending in Adult Social Care is jeopardising the Council's financial stability.
Can you explain which areas of ASC have overspent the budget agreed by Council and by how much in the year to date?
Answer:
The Local Government Association estimates that councils in England face a funding gap of almost £3 billion over the next two years just to keep services standing still. The majority of this funding gap, as experienced in Wokingham, relates to pressures in Social Care for Adult and Children’s Services.
Wokingham is a well-run efficient council, providing valuable service to residents. We use our limited funding wisely and Adults Services provide good care and support, making a positive difference to many people, enabling them to live their lives in ways that matter to them. However, after more than a decade of chronic underfunding of core services for vulnerable Adults and Children, coupled recently with unfinanced inflation, we now face a financial precipice.
In respect of the overall allocation of funding to Adults Social Care, we require greater weighting to be given towards recognising the basic cost of delivering services when determining need, as opposed to steering funding elsewhere as a result of recognising specific factors such as deprivation. In 2023/24, Wokingham has once again received one of the lowest percentages of Settlement Funding Assessment Grant as a share of its total income, of any unitary authority.
The Adult Services budget in 2023/24 was £65.9million, 36.5% of the total Council budget. We are currently forecasting a net overspend of £476,000 for the 2023/24 financial year. This represents a 0.7% overspend against budget. Inflation was a lot more than that.
The overspend in Adult Services is being driven by demand for services, the availability of care alongside the increased placement costs across Adult Social Care, caused principally by inflation.
Supplementary Question:
Thank you for that answer, not as specific as I would have liked but thank you all the same. I am aware of two streams of funding that we have coming into the Council, the Better Care Fund and from Continuing Healthcare, which you will be very well aware of. I hope that you can tell me that we have been as a council receiving these monies so far this year, because obviously not to receive them would be very difficult first of all, but secondly it means that the Council would be funding some additional services that the NHS have not yet paid for, and it is my concern that if we do not collect that money then we will find ourselves further in debt. Can you please tell me if that has not been collected what procedures you would put in place in order to pick up the debts that may be owed to us by the NHS?
Supplementary Answer:
As you know the NHS is not the most generous of payers, and certainly we have not found it easy. I cannot say specific things, but certainly our officers are going after that, but it would be good if you and I got together and we can put some more pressure on the NHS, because certainly I know for instance, they have not paid some of our money which is amounting to almost £2million. We need to have that now and that would certainly help us.