England’s adult social care sector faces extra costs of £2.8bn next year due to changes announced in last month’s Budget, new research has revealed.
Changes to employer national insurance contributions (ENICs) are set to cost the sector more than £940m next year, the Nuffield Trust found.
The national living wage increase will cost providers a further £1.85bn, according to the health and social care think-tank.
The Nuffield Trust warned that if councils were unable to pay social care providers higher fees, many small providers would be ‘at risk of collapse’.
The charity’s deputy director of policy, Natasha Curry, said: ‘Already fragile after a decade of cuts, runaway inflation and the effects of Covid-19, adult social care was in desperate need of relief.
‘But this was a Budget that gave with one hand and took away with the other.’
She warned that while the Government rightly wanted to reform social care, ‘there may be little left of it to reform’.
The chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, David Fothergill, called on the Government to fully fund the national living wage and ENIC increases.
