Shropshire Council 'almost unable to afford adult social care'

Shropshire Council's leader Malcolm Pate has written to Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, calling for fairer funding to prevent cuts to adult social care.

The move follows a Government announcement last week that would enable councils to effectively get an advance on council tax to pay for adult social care – but no extra funding.

Councillor Pate, says: "I wanted to make clear to the minister that last week's adult social care announcement just won't make any difference to the financial challenges that we face.

"We've made clear to the government on a number of occasions the challenging position that Shropshire Council finds itself in, and argued strongly for fairer funding for Shropshire. After last week's announcement I felt that I needed to make this argument again.

"I have told the minister that we should be an exemplar for Government as we consistently deliver better services than other authorities at much lower cost across the board. Indeed, we have frequent visits from other authorities because they want to see how we do it. I've said that this cannot be sustained with more cuts and we are rapidly reaching a point where we will be unable to afford adult social care alone, despite being amongst the authorities with the lowest cost per head for this service."

In his letter Councillor Pate says the impact of the adult social care grant has been to shift funding to metropolitan areas. He refers to an analysis by the Society of County Treasurers which demonstrates that the impact of the provisional settlement has left Shropshire the 37th worst affected authority out of 38 when considering 'Core Spending Power' between 2016/17 and 2017/18, "making an already poor position even worse".

In his letter Councillor Pate says Shropshire has an above average elderly population, with almost 30 per cent more over-65s than the national average.

He says that compared to the average council area Shropshire Council receives around £35 million less for the local authority, while the NHS system receives £110 million less – a gap of almost £150 million per year in the local economy.

Councillor Pate has invited Mr Javid to visit the county to discuss the issues.