Newcastle council are calling on the government for social care funding ahead of the budget

Tomorrow the autumn budget will be announced

Author: Sophie GreenPublished 29th Oct 2024

Ahead of the budget tomorrow, Newcastle City Council tell us that funding for adult and children social care urgently needs support.

They say that the situation left by the Conservative government has been disastrous and that it needs fixing urgently.

Tomorrow the Chancellor will be announcing the first budget from a Labour government in 14 years.

Paul Frew, cabinet member for resources and performance at Newcastle City Council, said: "Costs keep going up, increasing demand and need for support for people who are elderly or people who have disabilities and need some level of support. As a local authority, we are required to provide that.

"We need to be able to stabilise the finances for that so that we can then go on to say, well, what additional things do we want to do in Newcastle. What will make the place look better, what will make it cleaner, greener and a better place to live.

"That is around about two-thirds of our revenue spend and because that's a statutory requirement, we have to provide that. It then competes with the nice to haves.

"What we need to hear from government is some idea of changes and reforms that they're looking to make that will fix what is a fundamentally broken financing system for local government."

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