On the eve of the Budget, the row about whether ministers struck a ‘sweetheart deal’ with Surrey Council on social care funding to stop the local authority from having to hold a referendum on raising council tax has blown up again. BBC Surrey has recorded extracts of a meeting between council leader David Hodge and colleagues in which he talks of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that was struck with Sajid Javid. The councillor claims that such agreements often take place in the Conservative party.
This is particularly unhelpful for ministers if they are planning to tell councils to buck their ideas up about social care, as they seem to be preparing to do tomorrow. Javid, Philip Hammond and others have been preparing the ground on this, pointing out at departmental questions and in op-eds that just 24 local authorities account for 50 per cent of all the delayed discharges from NHS wards. If some councils such as Surrey are seen to be getting special treatment, this will make it much more difficult to tell other local authorities that they simply aren’t doing a good enough job of managing their resources.
The Communities and Local Government department is pushing back hard against the recording, insisting that ‘there was no special deal for Surrey County Council and they will not receive any extra funding that would not otherwise be provided or offered to other councils’.
The pre-Budget briefings about social care also suggest that there is not going to be a huge amount more money available for social care – with the greatest hope being noises about a long-term review. But as I wrote this morning, there have been plenty of long-term reviews, and even those involved in the cross-party talks that are starting up now on social care are merely hopeful that something good could eventually come about, rather than anything more concrete.
Comments