Green Party Manifesto: Social care

1 June 2017

“There’s only a crisis in social care because of under-investment. Yes the ageing population is coming…”

Councils were projected to spend £16.5 billion on adult social care in England in 2016/17—that’s a fall of 8% since 2009/10.
Experts generally agree that councils need more money to pay for adult social care and keep up with the ageing population, but the exact figure they put on this varies.
This ‘spending gap’ is estimated to be around £600 million in 2017/18 and £2.1 billion by 2019/20, according to experts at the Health Foundation think tank, along with the Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund.
Other estimates made by charities and local government organisations put the size of the gap between £1.3 billion and £1.6 billion this year. By 2019/20 the estimates suggest it could be £1.1 billion to £2.6 billion. But these other estimates were made before the government committed around £2 billion to adult social care in England earlier this year.
Between 2017 and 2027 the number of over 75s in England is expected to increase by just over 1.7 million, based on population projections.

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