The scale of the Government’s challenge to curb public spending against a backdrop of soaring demand has been laid bare by a report examining the state of key public services.

In the seventh edition of its Performance Tracker, the Institute for Government and the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy warn: ‘Public services are now in a more fragile state than before the pandemic.

'They face higher costs due to inflation, are vulnerable to new variants of COVID, and the NHS and social care in particular expect a winter crisis following an already difficult summer.

'The spending review settlement is now unlikely to be sufficient to meet growing demands and deal with the aftermath of COVID in most services.They add: ‘The spending settlement for local government is no longer sufficient to meet demand in adult social care, children’s social care and neighbourhood services.’

The report, published before Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s dramatic ditching of the mini-Budget tax cuts and his warning of spending cuts on October 17, adds that ‘at the same time, the workforce crisis that briefly eased during the first year of the pandemic is now worse than ever, with 50,000 fewer posts in the social care workforce filled in March 2022 than at the same point the year before, and the highest vacancy rate on record.’

There is also a backlog in social care demand with more than 294,449 people awaiting assessment by social services as of April 2022, up from 70,000 people in September 2021, exacerbated by an ageing population.

This article was originally published by The MJ (£).