The National Care Forum (NCF) – the leading association for not-for-profit social care has responded to the to the announcements made today by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the publication of the Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement.

The Settlement confirms that this will be the first multi-year Settlement in a decade, running from 2026/27 to 2028/29. As part of this:

• An additional £4.6bn is being available for adult social care in 2028/29 compared to 2025/26, which includes the £500m for the first Fair Pay Agreement.
• The government is consolidating key adult social care grants to local government into an unringfenced Revenue Support Grant and distributing this using a new Fair Funding Assessment.
• The Local Authority Better Care grant will remain ringfenced and will be pooled into the Better Care Fund.
• DHSC will set out adult social care notional allocations for each local authority over the multi-year Settlement intended as a reference point to support local councils in decisions on adult social care spending.

Vic Rayner, CEO of NCF commented: “We welcome the publication of the first multi-year settlement in a decade as this should enable local authorities to better enable a more strategic approach to adult social care commissioning. Moves to implement a fairer funding system for local government based on updated data on needs and costs are also welcome. However, we recognise and share the concerns raised by many within local government around redistribution and the very real risks present in the delivery of social care, particularly in parts of the country where people are already finding it difficult to access care and support services.

“Our biggest concern with today’s announcement is the decision to unringfence the majority of adult social care grants to local government, including the £500m committed specifically for the Fair Pay Agreement for care workers. The consolidation of key adult social care grants into a non-ringfenced Revenue Support Grant, puts adult social care funding at enormous risk due to wider public and political pressures, combined with commitments at a local level. It is also unclear how a nationally negotiated Fair Pay Agreement can be agreed with any confidence when local allocations are not protected for this purpose. Without further details of how performance against ‘notional allocations’ will be determined, it is difficult to see that these allocations offer any more than cold comfort in the face of the already challenging funding situation of local government as a whole.”