John Biggs, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said: “The Government’s social care strategy has been to pass the buck to local councils to provide many social care services, cut council budgets, and then blame them when council tax bills have to increase to fund the services. Tower Hamlets Council has been forced to save £200m since 2010 and we have to save a further £30m by 2024. At the same time demand for our services, particularly social care, has increased dramatically.
“Local councils have been desperately calling for social care to be put on a sustainable footing for many years and action is well overdue. However I’m deeply concerned that paying for it by increasing national insurance will impact lower earners more than high earners, hurting families who are still reeling financially from the Covid pandemic.
“It is outrageous that the Prime Minister is claiming his plans will fix the social care crisis, when only £5.3billion of the £36billion extra that will be raised in the first three years will actually go on social care, and when the new cap on lifetime spending will only apply to those starting care after October 2023.
“While much of the talk is about funding residential care, which is important and welcome, it misses the equally important need to adequately fund the care services people receive in the community and in their homes, and it misses the fact that we are trusting the care of our most vulnerable to dedicated care workers who, whether they are in the community or in care homes, are generally poorly rewarded and often in insecure employment.”
In Tower Hamlets:
- POPPI (Projecting Older People Information System) projects that the number of older people requiring help with at least one domestic task will rise from 5,582 in 2019 to 6,341 in 2023 and to 9,935 in 2035.
- PANSI (Projecting Adults Needs and Service Information) projects that there will be a significantly higher increase in learning disabilities, impaired mobility and common mental disorders within the 18-64 year old population between 2019 and 2035 than in London or England as a whole.
|John Biggs, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said: “The Government’s social care strategy has been to pass the buck to local councils to provide many social care services, cut council budgets, and then blame them when council tax bills have to increase to fund the services. Tower Hamlets Council has been forced to save £200m since 2010 and we have to save a further £30m by 2024. At the same time demand for our services, particularly social care, has increased dramatically.
“Local councils have been desperately calling for social care to be put on a sustainable footing for many years and action is well overdue. However I’m deeply concerned that paying for it by increasing national insurance will impact lower earners more than high earners, hurting families who are still reeling financially from the Covid pandemic.
“It is outrageous that the Prime Minister is claiming his plans will fix the social care crisis, when only £5.3billion of the £36billion extra that will be raised in the first three years will actually go on social care, and when the new cap on lifetime spending will only apply to those starting care after October 2023.
“While much of the talk is about funding residential care, which is important and welcome, it misses the equally important need to adequately fund the care services people receive in the community and in their homes, and it misses the fact that we are trusting the care of our most vulnerable to dedicated care workers who, whether they are in the community or in care homes, are generally poorly rewarded and often in insecure employment.”
In Tower Hamlets:
- POPPI (Projecting Older People Information System) projects that the number of older people requiring help with at least one domestic task will rise from 5,582 in 2019 to 6,341 in 2023 and to 9,935 in 2035.
- PANSI (Projecting Adults Needs and Service Information) projects that there will be a significantly higher increase in learning disabilities, impaired mobility and common mental disorders within the 18-64 year old population between 2019 and 2035 than in London or England as a whole.
