News

Some English local authorities face cuts in their Supporting People budgets of up to 10 per cent - four times the efficiency saving prescribed by the government.

Hampshire Council is having to cut £3.2m of its £33.4m Supporting People budget in 2004-5 because of changes made earlier in the year by the government in the way the programme was funded.

Oldham Council fears it will lose £1m of its £8.7m budget, while another council in the south east, which asked not to be named, fears it will lose around 7.5 per cent of its £30m-plus budget.

In February, the government announced that all councils would need to make savings of 2.5 per cent in their Supporting People budgets for 2004-5 and that there would be no increase to take into account inflation in this year's allocations.

It followed a review of the programme by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which found that the £1.8bn paid for Supporting People in 2003-4 was too high.

But some councils are saying the government has underestimated the level of cuts they will need to make to keep within their budgets.

Alan Hagger, Supporting People manager in Hampshire, said that on top of cuts to meet the efficiency targets, the authority faced £1.6m of additional costs to run new schemes set up with capital funding last year and increased demand. He said the council would be forced to cap the amount it spent on clients.

Poor data at root of programme shortfall

The government underestimated the full cost of housing-related support under the Supporting People programme because of a lack of quality data on housing and support services provided by local authorities before 2000, the latest Supporting People review concludes.

Most services under the transitional housing benefit scheme were originally hidden within the overall cost of housing benefit, the Office of The Deputy Prime Minister's review published earlier this week finds. Its aim was to identify why exchequer costs rose from £880m for England in April 2002 to £1.4bn in December 2002 and £1.8bn in April 2003.

An earlier review into the funding increase, published in February, accused councils of cost shunting, commandeering Supporting People money to pay for services that were previously paid for by other budgets (news, page 10, 19 February).

However, although the latest review acknowledges that local authorities had used the uncapped transitional housing benefit scheme to support other government policies, it says the move had been recognised and encouraged by government.

It adds that a late development of services by local authorities that were "confused and reluctant" to develop until they were confident about the funding stream contributed to a low uptake at the beginning.

- Supporting People: Review of the Development of the Policy and Costs of Housing-related Support from www.spkweb.org.uk/files/Supporting%20People%20Review.pdf