P-05-840 Fair Funding for Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council – Correspondence from the Petitioner to the Committee – 15.10.18

The  comment  is that Welsh Government claim to be investing in Early intervention & Prevention, Health & Social Care integration and all sorts of partnerships. Clearly, they are NOT doing so.  NPT  for one, Are  not prepared to be part of this fiction and they have been rumbled anyway by the likes of the Future Generations Commissioner who has challenged the budget on this basis.

Instead, they are investing the overwhelming bulk of the extra money in hospitals and the treatment of sickness. All bar £30m of the extra Health & Social Care has gone to the NHS and even that 30 has major strings attached as Hywel says below.

At this rate, we will reach a point where the Health Board will be on their own because we will not have the community care capacity to help them with bed blocking when the ambulances start to stack up outside Morriston’s A&E Department at the end of January, if not before.

Just to confirm that the £30m you mention for Social Care is the total amount of additional monies for the whole of Wales. WG have not yet announced their specific grants and detailed budget allocations – they are due to be published on 23 October 2018. When they are announced we need to understand the grant conditions and purpose for these monies and how they can be bid for/received. Our share of this £30m would normally be circa 5% or £1.5m.

The Provisional Settlement announcement mentioned some extra monies in the settlement including for Teachers pay £13.7m, Education £15m, School meals £7m, Social Services £20m. However, given that the all Wales average was a cut of -0.3% and all of these extra monies are included in that cut this represents a significant reduction to the funding of Local Authorities. In addition the announcement made no reference to funding the increased costs for Teachers pensions which in Wales amounts to £41m next year and £71m in a full year. What we really needed for a standstill budget was an increase of circa 5% and hence the settlement fell way short of that at -0.3%. The First Minister in his radio interview earlier this week said that Local Government would be a priority for additional funds should they become available following the Chancellor’s Budget of 29 October 2018.

Regards

Mark Fisher

Branch Chair / Cadeirydd Cangen

Further Correspondence – petitioner to the Committee, 16.10.18

Good afternoon,

Please see below part of our submission for the above petition.

Kind regards,

Mark Fisher

Branch Chair

UNISON Neath Port Talbot Branch

Question:

Will the Cabinet Secretary for Finance confirm that the £30m of additional funding for Social Care identified in the draft budget will be provided through the Revenue Support Grant to local authorities?

Supplementary

Will the Cabinet Secretary for Finance confirm whether it is the current intention to provide the additional £30m for Social Care via a specific grant and, if so, who will be the recipient: local authorities or local health boards, recognising that regional partnership boards are not able to be grant recipients in their own right?