The National Care Forum (NCF) – the leading association for not-for-profit social care has responded to announcements made in the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget speech today. Some of the measures impacting social care include:  

• A rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions by 1.2 percentage points to 15% alongside a cut to the earnings threshold at which employers start paying these contributions from £9,100 to £5,000.  

• New local government grant funding of £600m for social care, alongside an £86m increase to the Disabled Facilities Grant. 

• A 6.7% increase to the National Living Wage, taking it to £12.21 for those aged over 21 and £10 for those aged over 18.  

Vic Rayner, CEO of National Care Forum commented: “Far from heralding a new dawn for social care, this historic budget appears to do little to recognise the vital role that social care plays in the lives of millions of people up and down the country. Adult social care providers will be hit particularly hard by the government’s planned changes to employers’ National Insurance contributions. Unless fully funded, these increases alongside the welcome raising of the National Living Wage will combine to apply an enormous financial strain and also undermine their ability to focus on the real need to improve care workers’ pay, terms and conditions.    

“With the apparent commitment of £22.6bn to the NHS compared to the £600m pledged to social care through local government funding it’s clear that the government still has a long way to go in supporting the critical role that care and support plays in the health and wellbeing of local communities. The shift from hospital to community simply will not work without the proper, long-term funding of social care. 

“Of the local authorities with responsibility for social services, 70% of their spending is on social care. Even if all the £600m were to be dedicated to meeting the cumulative additional costs that social care employers will now face, it is unlikely to cover the required uplifts. This is before envisaging how hard this will hit people who pay for their own care, in a system desperate for reform. 

“The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has repeatedly spoken about the importance of a properly functioning adult social care system to fixing the NHS. He has also said it is important in its own right in enabling people to live well in the way they want to. We should be investing in this crucial piece of the nation’s infrastructure which improves population health and wellbeing, is inherently preventative, benefits the economy and takes the burden off acute services. 

“It seems clear that this Budget will not even provide the desperately needed stabilisation that every report, inquiry and select committee has demanded. Neither, unfortunately, does it reassure that this a government committed to ensuring social care is understood, prioritised and invested in as a public service that changes people’s lives.”