Patching the social care funding gap with short-term fixes will cause the sector to lurch from one crisis to the next with mounting human and financial costs, an influential health think-tank has warned.

Prime minister Theresa May is understood to be considering allowing greater flexibility over the council tax precept to fund the ailing care sector. 

The Local Government Association's (LGA) health and wellbeing spokesman Cllr Izzie Seccombe confirmed that ministers had expressed an interest in extending the precept.

However, The King’s Fund’s policy director Richard Humphries said the precept was ‘deeply flawed’.