Issue - meetings

Report of Corporate Director for People

Councillor Woodings, Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care and Health, introduced the report.

Jackie Wyse, Interim Head of Service, Contracts, Quality and Personalisation, presented the report, and stated the following:

a)  as Nottingham City Council is contractually obliged to consider fee rates on an annual basis where it has a statutory duty to provide a service, the report presents proposals for fee rates in 2024/25 across Adult Social Care contracted provision;

b)  consultation will be undertaken with providers on the proposals and the responses will be fully considered prior to implementation from April 2024;

c)  the Council’s fee rates for adult social care services have historically been reviewed annually and decisions based on an established methodology for calculating inflationary increases. An evidence base for pricing was originally developed based on the UK Homecare Association model for Care at Home type services and independent review of residential care pricing. These tools have been adjusted to account for factors including the current market position, cost of living indices and Office of National Statistics data;

d)  every year, these established tools have been used to undertake analysis of the potential impact of national living wage requirements and other pressures such as cost of living, pensions, profit, and voids. Alongside these financial pressures, there are other aspects which are considered:

o  the current provider market including number of providers and quality of the market;

o  demand for social care provision arising from demographic pressures;

o  difficulty in attracting workers into the care sector due to competition from other sectors;

o  competition between Local Authorities and their ability to pay more to the market

o  the fee rate modelling process has therefore been key to support social care providers to meet NLW and other cost pressures, and to manage the social care market, whilst balancing against the Council’s other budget commitments and pressures;

e)  in December 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care announced the new Market Sustainability and Fair Cost of Care Fund, available to support local authorities to begin preparing local care markets for reform and moving towards sustainable funding for this market;

f)  local authorities were expected to use this funding for activities such as conducting a cost of care exercise; improving data on costs; strengthening capacity for market oversight; and increasing fee rates as appropriate to local circumstances;

g)  in 2023-24, Nottingham City Council received an allocation of £5.99m from this fund, which has been used to support transformational work, to complete a strength-based review, bolster staffing levels and to provide a sustainable level of funding. The Fair Cost of Care work has been completed; however, the local response rate was extremely low (mirrored nationally) and therefore the outcome was inconclusive;

h)  due to the significant budget constraints, further options have been proposed and are outlined in exempt appendix 1. Information in relation to the market context (including benchmarking) and intelligence relating to the fragility of the market, quality and provider failure that is outlined within exempt appendix 3.

Resolved  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63