MEDIA RELEASE
Issued by:
Councillor Simon Holbrook
Date of Issue: December 2nd 2009
Contact numbers:
07824 431295
Lib Dem office: 0151 691 8544

GOVERNMENT EXPECTS LOCAL COUNCIL TAX PAYERS TO FOOT EXTRA BILL FOR PERSONAL CARE

Ahead of a report on the Council's provisional financial settlement from the Government, due to be considered at a meeting of Cabinet on 9th December, Deputy Leader of the Council and Liberal Democrat Leader Councillor Simon Holbrook has slammed Government's failure to provide funds to local authorities to pay for free home care.

The Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a pledge at this year's Labour Party conference to provide free personal care in their own homes for those with highest need from October next year. The annual cost of this is estimated by Department of Health officials to be £670m and it plans to fund £420m of this over the next two years from the existing NHS Budget. Local authorities will be expected to make up the £250m difference and are not being allocated any money to cover this additional cost.

Councillor Holbrook said, "I wholeheartedly support any measures that enable more people to live independently in their own homes. However, political grandstanding by a desperate Labour Government that has forgotten how to count is not the way to do this. Now is not the time for new financial burdens to be dumped on local councils - all the information we are receiving and everything we are being told is that belts will have to be tightened - by several notches."

"No one seems to have an answer about what the true costs of this measure would be. Some local authority commentators have suggested that an estimated annual spend of £670m falls well short of what would be needed. £670m would work out at just £38 of care a week for each of the 350,000 people that this would affect across the country – far short of the estimated £165 cost of the average 11-hour package of domiciliary care provided in 2007."

"Just like with the Thatcher Government's Community Care Act in 1990, this Government is trying to shift the national debt off its books and on to local councils. And just like then, all of this is currently unfunded expenditure at a time when local authorities have been preparing to batten down the hatches on spending and can ill-afford any additional financial pressures."

Note: Wirral's share of the £250m additional cost is estimated at £1.7m

To view the Cabinet Report click here