Guidance

Implementation support grant guidance

Updated 27 September 2024

Applies to England

Following an announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29 July 2024, the planned adult social care charging reforms, which were inherited from the previous government, will not be taken forward in October 2025.

Background

On 7 September 2021, the Prime Minister announced that from October 2023, the government will introduce:

• a new £86,000 lifetime cap on the amount anyone in England will need to spend on their personal care over their lifetime – only personal contributions will count towards the cap
• an extended means test, enabling state support for anyone with up to £100,000 of assets – more than 4 times the current limit – and anyone with assets under £20,000 will not have to pay anything for their care from their assets

The government launched a consultation on the charging reform statutory guidance on 4 March which ran until 1 April. The government also published the charging reform consultation guidance in an easy read format on 14 March.

The main purpose of this consultation was to seek views on the statutory guidance which sets out how a cap on care cost would operate in practice, as well as to inform how government can support local authorities in their preparations for its implementation from October 2023.

The government is now publishing the revised guidance on ‘supporting local preparation’, which provides guidance on the statutory duties for local authorities that will be in place from October 2023 and how local authorities should prepare for these changes. Alongside this, the government is also publishing the initial implementation funding allocations for financial year 2022 to 2023.

Details

As set out in the ASC charging reform: impact assessment, funding will be made available to support local authorities to prepare for the reforms. This grant determination sets out the detail of the initial tranche of implementation support funding available to local authorities this year. Further implementation funding will be made available in the financial year 2023 to 2024 and the government intends to consult on a proposed approach to distribution for this funding later this year.

This initial tranche of implementation support funding is intended to support local authorities to begin planning and preparations for charging reform, as set out in the revised guidance. This is primarily to support local authorities undertake recruitment activities for assessment staff and ensure that they have dedicated internal resource to prepare to upgrade local IT systems to include care account functionality. The grant design offers flexibility to local authorities to use the funding as is best suited to their local planning.

IT system requirements are set out in the transitional operational guidance that has been published and the specification will be published shortly. As set out in the guidance, it is local authorities’ responsibility to engage with their suppliers and plan for timely IT system upgrades. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), working in partnership with NHS England’s transformation directorate (NHSTD), is in discussion with IT suppliers on the best way to ensure value for money delivery on the care account specification.

The guidance also sets out that local authorities will want to consider new ways of working to meet additional demand from new groups. This could include best practice use of digital tools or using supported self-assessments where appropriate. Further capacity enhancement funding will be available later this year as part of a second tranche of implementation support funding, to further support the implementation of charging reform in local authorities.

DHSC and NHSTD will support with sharing best practice of digital tools that could support productivity enhancement for assessments, including learnings from the trailblazer initiative.

This funding will be paid as an un-ringfenced section 31 grant to local authorities, and has been allocated evenly with the 2021 area cost adjustments applied.

The document is accompanied by 2 annexes:

• Annex A: grant determination letter

• Annex B: grant allocations