The leader of Theresa May’s own local authority has said other councils could feel obliged to follow Surrey in seeking massive rises in council tax to pay for social care.
Simon Dudley, the Conservative leader of Windsor and Maidenhead council, was speaking after Surrey council, which is also Tory-run, said it would hold a referendum on plans to raise council tax by 15% amid pressures on its social care budget and children’s services.
Surrey council’s leader, David Hodge, said the scale of central government funding cuts and rising demand for social care and other services meant he saw no other realistic option.
“The alternative I have is to take a harsh brush and sweep away services,” Hodge told Channel 4 News late on Thursday. “I’m not prepared to do that.”
Speaking on Friday morning, Dudley warned that Surrey was likely to be a harbinger of similar difficult decisions elsewhere.
“Surrey is, in my view, just a canary in a coal mine,” Dudley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There will be other local authorities that are faced with incredibly difficult decisions in terms of preserving broader council services or protecting the vulnerable.
“Given the way there is a referendum cap on how a local authority can increase its council tax, they will be forced to go to their electorate and go through a very painful process of asking people to make difficult decisions.”
Dudley said that his authority was raising council tax by 3.95%, including the 3% increase allowed to fund social care.
“We have in the region of 150,000 residents, yet 40% of everything our local authority spends it spends on adult social care for in the region of 2,500 of those residents to protect them, they are vulnerable. We want to spend that money, we will spend that money,” he said.
“But it gives you an idea of the importance of adult social care in the overall budgets of local authorities.”
May’s spokesman rejected claims that the interventions indicated the government was in denial over the funding of social care.
“As I’ve made perfectly clear, the proposition to raise council tax by 15% is a matter for Surrey council, and is now a matter for the voters of Surrey, on whether they agree with it or not,” he said. “In terms of the wider issue, the government has given councils much greater freedom to decide how they spend their tax revenues so that they can best serve their local communities.”
The issue “isn’t just about funding”, the spokesman said, adding: “As we have pointed out on several occasions, there are certain local authorities where, for instance, they have had no delayed discharges from hospitals as a result of social care.
“We want to see those sorts of best practices deployed across local government, recognising there will have to be a longer-term solution around the issue of social care.”
Hodge said his council had made £450m in savings since 2010, and was on track to save £700m by 2020, with demand for social care rising all the time.
Asked why, as a Conservative, he was challenging May’s government on this, he said: “Do you not honestly think it’s right that somebody, for once and for all, stands up and tells the truth about what’s going on? Everyone talks about adult social care being short of money, but nobody’s prepared to stand up and say, it has to stop.”
Hodge said he had made his case to civil servants but had received only “sympathy”, and no realistic options. He said he was “really quite upset that we’ve had to be put in this position”.