Councils face a £500m shortfall in funding social care for older people

A new report published by the charity Age UK paints a bleak picture of local authorities struggling with increasingly inadequate levels of funding, combined with soaring need. "Local authorities, which are already squeezing every pound through cutting red tape, making back-office savings, linking services, and exploring a whole range of other innovations, are going to find it increasingly difficult to make further savings against a backdrop of escalating costs [and] a system that is underfunded, compounded now by severe funding cuts," he said. Cross party talks on reform have reopened, and in the spring the government is due to publish a progress report on its thinking, including a response to the Dilnot commission, which last year called for extra state spending of an initial £1.7bn to help underwrite a revamped system that is based on a cap of £35000 on any individual's lifetime care costs.