The National Care Forum (NCF) – the leading association for not for profit care providers has responded to the publication of a new Nuffield Trust blog revealing the scale of the combined additional cost to social care providers of the government’s proposals to increase employer National Insurance Contributions. The report suggests that the impact of the additional cost is set to be over £900 million. 

When combined with the National Minimum Wage rises, Nuffield say the total additional burden on the 18,000 independent organisations providing adult social care in England will be an estimated £2.8bn. They further suggest that the result could be many businesses placed at risk of collapse, meaning the vital care and support thousands of people depend on could be disrupted or disappear completely. 

Professor Vic Rayner OBE, Chief Executive Officer, said: “Nuffield Trust offer clear independent analysis of the very real costs that the decisions within the Budget will place on the social care sector. In the absence of a realistic recognition by government of the scale of the costs and little detail on how the government plans to respond to protect this essential public service, care and support providers are facing some very difficult and stark choices. These unfunded increases in employers’ costs make it very hard to see how the government can deliver its ambitious plans for the NHS which are intrinsically interdependent on social care for people of all ages. These Budget measures demonstrate a lack of understanding of the well documented pre-existing underfunding of adult social care, and rather than protecting the position of workers, they run the risk of undermining the efforts of social care employers who have been actively working to enhance and improve the pay, terms and conditions of the workforce.  In the development of the government’s future reform plans, we urge them to be expansive in their thinking and understanding of adult social care’s potential, as outlined in our pillars for a National Care Service.”