Purpose

Brief Description

Section 5 of the Care
Act 2014 requires council to ensure the sustainability, diversity
and quality of the care market to meet population needs. The report
seeks approval from the Director of Adults and Health for the
application of fee increases to externally commissioned care and
support services for 2025/2026, for home care services including
the pilot Community Health and Wellbeing contract and community
short breaks, care homes, extra care services, shared lives and
uplifts for direct payments and providers of services for working
age adults.

Impact On Wards

All

Financial and
procurement implications

All fee uplifts will
be contained within the Adults and Health 2025 -2026 financial
budget. There are no procurement implications for this
decision.

Partnership working

None

 

Content

The Director of Adults
and Health has –
 
a) 
Noted and agreed the contents of the report.
 
b) 
Approved an increase in the fee rates as detailed in the table in
paragraph 10 ii below for externally commissioned homecare services
and community health and wellbeing service for the financial year
for 2025/2026.
 
c) 
Approved the fee increase and agree the new cost structure stated
in paragraphs 11 iii of this report for the independent sector
older people’s care homes overarching agreement for the
financial year 2025/2026.
 
d) 
Approved an increase in the hourly rates for Extra Care and the
Direct Payments rate for Personal Assistants, in accordance with
the home care rate increases to be applied to the Interim Homecare
Contract providers as stated paragraphs 12ii and 14 in the
report.
 
e) 
Approved the inflationary allocation to manage all uplift requests
for 2025/2026 for all independent sector Learning Disability and
all other working age adult independent sector providers.
 
f) 
Approved the process of uplift offers with providers of services
for working age adults, during the course of 2025/26, based on the
use of the adapted Care Cost Calculator and on rigorous value for
money audits of the Service Cost Analysis Form (SCAF) submitted by
the providers.
 
g) 
Agreed that all increases in fees shall be applied from and
backdated to 7th April 2025.
 
h) 
Noted the relevant Head of Commissioning will implement this
decision immediately following the expiry of the call in period by
issuing letters to the care providers to inform them of this
decision and updating the Client Information System to allow
payments to be made at the new rate or commencing the discussions
with providers where relevant.
 
i) 
Noted that all future decisions will be direct consequences of this
key decision and will be taken as publishable administrative
decisions or as written record administrative decisions as required
by the appropriate officers as per the sub-delegation scheme.