Councils now only able to offer the ‘bare minimum’ of adult social care support, MPs are told

Local authorities in England are now only able to provide the “bare minimum” of services to disabled and older people who need support through the adult social care system, MPs were told yesterday (Wednesday).

Three senior local government figures were giving evidence to the Commons health and social care committee as part of its inquiry into the “cost of inaction” on adult social care reform.

Hugh Evans, executive director for adults and communities for Bristol City Council – whose council has come under repeated attack in recent years for its cuts to social care – told the committee that he and his colleagues were having to focus on the council’s financial “survival” every year.

He said his council’s ability to raise revenue through council tax was “not sufficient to meet the increased cost of adult social care”.

Evans said: “That’s certainly happened in Bristol. Spendings outpace local government funding and so we have to make savings.”

The council spent 75 per cent of its revenue on adult and children’s social care in 2023-24, compared with 56 per cent in 2017-18.

He said: “We’re having to emphasise the bare minimum of statutory services in order to be able to fulfil our duties under the Care Act.”

Melanie Williams, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and executive director of adult social care for Nottinghamshire County Council, said her local authority was focused on “just providing the minimal amount of support in their homes” for older people.

She said: “It may be that… they may take a direct payment and we would be looking at what is the minimum they would require to stay relatively well.

“What we wouldn’t be able to invest in is necessarily having friendships, being able to get out and about more.

“So, what somebody’s receiving probably is the basic personal care, the bare minimum, rather than what would be needed for an older adult to really enjoy a great quality of life as they age.”

She added: “That’s kind of where we are, there’s a sort of a rationing over time, if you like, because of focusing on the most immediate need.”

David Fothergill, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board and a Conservative councillor on Somerset Council, told the committee that adult social care was now “more or less half the budget of local authorities”, and adding children’s social care increased this to “well over 70 per cent of budgets”.

He said this left “very little for the remaining services, which many of your residents and many of my residents as well depend upon, including roads and libraries and things like that”.

Fothergill said that about £24 billion in savings had been taken out of council budgets since 2010, and local government was now facing an estimated funding gap of more than 20 billion pounds in total over the next four years.

He said adult social care was “really, really putting local government under a lot of pressure”.

Last year, he said, 15 local authorities had applied for emergency funding support, and that had risen this year to 34 councils, and “most of them are driven by social care pressure”.

He said his own council had “declared an emergency financial crisis, and that is purely based upon social care pressures”.

Meanwhile, Bristol City Council has finally produced most of the details of a contract it signed last spring with a consultancy that is using locum social workers to carry out up to 1,400 “strength-based reviews” of disabled people’s care packages as a cost-saving measure, at a cost of up to £700,000.

It provided the contract details to Disability News Service in response to a freedom of information request, following intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The council has been at the centre of controversy for more than two years since it revealed proposals to offer disabled people a “residential or nursing home placement” if a care package that would allow them to remain at home “would substantially exceed the affordability of residential care”.

The concerns about what the council called its Fair and Affordable Care Policy were first raised by the grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL).

The policy was eventually withdrawn, but last year the council brought forward new cuts worth millions of pounds that campaigners feared were also likely to push disabled people into residential care.

BRIl is now “very concerned” about the council’s latest plans and this week it issued a statement about the council’s 2025-26 budget, which includes £14.6 million projected savings from adult social care.

The budget includes plans for more reviews of care and support plans that will “support approaches which focus on an individuals’ personal strengths… in order to promote their wellbeing and independence”, and reviews of people who have previously been detained under the Mental Health Act that will result in “the need for less care and therefore reduced costs”.

BRIL said there was “a real risk” that millions of pounds of planned savings would be made by “redefining needs as mere wishes, leaving disabled people without essential support”, an approach that is “alarmingly similar to the Fair and Affordable Care Policy”.

Mark Williams, BRIL’s chair, said: “Every time I have a review, I feel under attack and worried that my care will be revoked or cut back.

“In one review they tried to tell me that being alone for half an hour would make me more ‘independent’.

“I refused. I am not independent on my own. I am independent when I have the right to the support I need.”

Picture: Melanie Williams (left) and Hugh Evans giving evidence to the committee

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