Briefings and responses

A summary of the key developments for local government on Neighbourhood Planning and Local development documents.

On 3 March 2021, the Government published guidance for care home providers on limiting staff movement between care settings in all but exceptional circumstances to help reduce the spread of infection.

Adult social care needs to be on a sustainable financial footing and the pressures on the system need to be properly understood.

The LGA and ADASS remain concerned about the variation across the country in eligibility rates for continuing healthcare under the current system.

The NHS does not operate in isolation. The commitment for increased funding for the NHS will only be maximised if there is an equivalent scale of investment in social care, public health and prevention services that both improve people’s health, wellbeing and independence and relieve pressure on frontline NHS services.

In recent years, adult social care has been propped up by one-off, piecemeal injections of funding. This hampers councils’ ability to plan for anything beyond a short-term horizon. Social care and public health funding should therefore be given the same long-term certainty as NHS funding.

The Long Term Plan (LTP) was published on 7 January. This briefing focuses on the areas of most interest and relevance to local government and summarises all relevant LGA views, comments and policy messages.

We welcome the numerous mentions throughout the document of the need for the NHS to work with partners, in particular local government. The NHS view of what constitutes a locally driven plan, however, is more centrally driven than the local government perspective.

Together with NHS England, local authorities and the LGA have undertaken a range of measures to improve preparedness for winter.

This paper offers the headline issues for local government under a ‘no deal’ Brexit scenario and advises Government on the key issues that would need to be addressed through national action.