Guidance

Local authority social services letter 2024 to 2025

Published 7 November 2024

Applies to England

Summary

This letter clarifies local authority-specific revenue funding for the financial year 2024 to 2025, which was subject to the 2021 Spending Review. This includes information on the:

• Local Reform and Community Voices grant
• Social Care in Prisons grant
• War Pensions Disregard grant

Action

This letter is provided for information only, and confirms details and allocations of Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) local authority-specific revenue funding.

Timelines

These grants will be paid to local authorities in November 2024.

Specific revenue funding

Local Reform and Community Voices (LRCV) grant

DHSC will make £34.41 million available through the Local Reform and Community Voices Section 31 grant in 2024 to 2025. This grant is comprised of the following funding streams:

• funding for deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS) in hospitals^{[footnote 1]} (£5.15 million)
• local Healthwatch organisation funding (£14.15 million)
• funding for Independent NHS Complaints Advocacy Services (ICAS) (£15.11 million)

Local authorities have a duty under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 (as amended by the Health and Social Care Act 2012) to ensure that an effective local Healthwatch organisation is operating in their area, delivering the activities set out in the legislation. The Local Reform and Community Voices grant provides one element of the non-ringfenced funding provided for local Healthwatch, with the larger proportion having been rolled into the local government finance settlement in 2011 to 2012.

Social Care in Prisons grant

DHSC will make £10.95 million available through the Social Care in Prisons Section 31 grant in 2024 to 2025 (this makes up part of the Care Act funding covered in further detail below).

The Care Act 2014 establishes that the local authority in which a prison, approved premises or bail accommodation is based will be responsible for assessing and meeting the care and support needs of the offenders residing there. The provision of care and support for those in custodial settings is based on the principle of equivalence to provision in the community. The Care Act 2014 clarifies the application of Part 1 for people in custodial settings, including aspects which do not apply.

This funding is allocated to prisons in proportion to the most appropriate prison population type (such as total population, by age categories or first receptions). We use the prison population information from the offender management statistics quarterly (October to December 2023 and January to March 2024 editions) published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Where appropriate, we adjust the prison population to take account of additional MoJ information on estimated average prison capacity across 2024 to 2025 to account for prison population fluctuations.

The allocations for each prison for all assessments and services are added together for all prisons located within the same local authority for the local authority level allocation, which are weighted by the area cost adjustment (ACA). The ACA aims to reflect differences in staff and other costs between areas. The postcode of each prison is used to identify the local authority in which it is based.

War Pensions Scheme Disregard grant

DHSC consulted in November 2016 about the allocation of new funding to disregard (for the purposes of social care charging) all payments made under the War Pensions Scheme with the exception of Constant Attendance Allowance.

The consultation response was published in February 2017, and concluded that this fund should be allocated by using the adult social care relative needs formula to weight the number of war pensioners by social care relative need and then divide to local authorities based on this. This option was chosen because it:

• gets as close as possible (given the available data) to the number of people receiving a war pension who have also met the adult social care eligibility criteria, by incorporating separate data on the distribution of these 2 relevant characteristics
• was supported by the majority of respondents to the consultation

DHSC will make £12 million available through the War Pensions Scheme Disregard Section 31 grant in 2024 to 2025.

Subsidy control

Local authorities should ensure they comply with their obligations under the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and the relevant UK subsidy control regime: statutory guidance.

Enquiries

For further information on these allocations, contact:

The Social Care Finance Team - Social Care Strategy and Reform Directorate
Department of Health and Social Care
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0EU

Email: scfinance-enquiries@dhsc.gov.uk

1. In addition to the funding outlined here, these services are supported through the local government finance settlement (2024 to 2025) ↩