Government figures claiming councils can raise £1bn through the social care precept are massively inflated from the sector’s calculations, it has emerged.
Communities minister Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth has told Parliament that if all councils ‘make the maximum use of the additional flexibility the Government has offered this will raise over £1bn for adult social care in 2017/18’.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) only offered an explanation of the figure today - after The MJ went to press.
It said its caculation took into account actual council tax levels for 2016/17 and assumed all councils made full use of the precept in 2017/18 - but a DCLG spokesman declined to give a full breakdown of how the department arrived at the £1bn figure.
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