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English councils face a significant cut in the level of adult social care information they must submit to central government for performance management, under consultative proposals published by the NHS Information Centre.

The plans are a response to the government's agenda of reducing performance burdens on councils, by slashing the number of indicators they are judged against to a national set of 198, just eight of which directly relate to adult social care. 

The centre, which collects and publishes information on adult care, is proposing that authorities should only submit adult social care data relating to the national indicator set.

Other data requirements would be scrapped, under the plans, unless councils and the Department of Health agree their continued collection would be useful to the sector.

The centre currently collects data on the following:-

• Referrals, assessments and packages of care.
• Home care.
• Residents supported at home.
• Grant-funded services.
• Personal social services (PSS) expenditure.
• PSS staffing.
• Registers of blind and partially sighted people.
• Registers of deaf and hard of hearing people.
• A user experience survey.
• Guardianship under the Mental Health Act 1983.
• Other data collected for specific performance monitoring on behalf of DH and the Commission for Social Care Inspection.

The current consultation does not cover the registers of sensory impaired people, as these are being reviewed separately by the DH, or the user experience survey, which is reviewed annually as a matter of course.

The consultation closes on 24 October 2008.

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