Please give us your views on the Adult Social Care Precept

Around 5,500 people in Hartlepool are supported by Adult Social Care, including includes residents with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, sensory loss, mental health issues and also carers. The majority are over 65.

Adult Social Care also helps people to continue to live in their own homes, including providing 182,000 hours of home care each year and giving over 3,000 people access to 24/7 telecare support.

The Coronavirus pandemic has further highlighted the critical role Adult Social Care services play in looking after Hartlepool’s most vulnerable residents, either in their own homes or residential care homes, and how this is key to reducing pressure on the NHS.

Yet despite a growing number of people needing children’s and adult care services, over the nine years up to 2019/20 Government funding to councils across England was reduced.

Hartlepool Borough Council has had to prioritise these services even though its overall budget has reduced. To partly tackle budget shortfalls in previous years, the Council has made numerous efficiencies, including cutting the number of people it employs by a fifth.

Although the Government has pledged some additional funding for children’s and adult social care, it has told councils to raise the majority of funding required from the Adult Social Care Precept.

Councillor Shane Moore, Leader of Hartlepool Borough Council and Chair of the Council’s Finance and Policy Committee, said: “We face some extremely tough choices. If we don’t apply a 3% Adult Social Care Precept we will need to reduce our expenditure by either reducing or stopping vital local services or introducing new fees and charges.

“As we have already made significant cuts in previous years, this will be extremely difficult and further cuts will have a visible impact.

“The responses people give us through the survey will be used to help us lobby the Government for a better and fairer system for funding social care services and will also help us to understand residents’ views on the Precept, so I hope people will spare a couple of minutes to take part.”

The survey – which closes on Tuesday 22nd December – is at www.hartlepool.gov.uk/adult-social-care-precept-survey