Adult social care budget to rise by more than £30million in Sheffield

Members of Sheffield City Council’s adult health and social care policy committee will discuss a quarterly update on the financial position for adult social care and associated governance improvements in the city next week (June 19).

A document published a week ahead of the meeting showed that there was £36.1million more in the budget for the upcoming year (compared with the 2023/24 municipal year).

This, as the report said, is “funded through grants and other external income”.

The report added the proportion of the budget funded through the council’s corporate budget increased by £8.6m – this part of the budget is also referred to as cash limit and is built up of council tax revenue, the revenue support grant from central government and business rates (which are paid to and then reallocated by central government).

Also, £5.4m of this was funded through the application of the social care precept when increasing council tax levies.

While it is still the largest part of the budget, the proportion of the budget funded through cash limit has reduced for another successive year (from 48 per cent of the total budget in 2022/23 to 43 per cent today).

However: “This continuing trend reflects the requirement to make savings against the health and social care budget each year.

“Savings in this instance means that the budget increase is not sufficient to meet the projected increase in costs due to inflation and demographic growth. 2024/25 cost increases were forecast at £37.5m.”

The £51m “fees and charges” income mainly relates to charges paid by citizens of Sheffield.

The report said the most significant increase in the budget was in the adult social care grant from the central government, with almost half of the budget rise coming from this source.

The vast majority of the adult social care budget “is spent on commissioned and council delivered regulated care services” – such as home care and residential care that deliver direct care and support to people across Sheffield.

The committee will also discuss last year’s reported overspend of £3.1m of which £2.1m related to non-purchasing costs, mainly staffing costs, and £1m related to “purchasing budgets, with one-off income and additional grant funding off-setting costs in-year”.

However, as the document added, “the outturn position for 2023/24 was a significant improvement on previous years”.