Asked by: Caroline Voaden (Liberal Democrat - South Devon)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has had recent discussions with Ofwat on the standardisation of social tariff schemes for water bills.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
All water companies have a range of measures in place for people who struggle to pay for their water and wastewater services, including social tariffs, WaterSure, payment breaks and holidays, and debt management support.
The Government is working with industry to keep the current support schemes under review to ensure that vulnerable customers across the country are supported.
Asked by: Caroline Voaden (Liberal Democrat - South Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that care home fee rates set by local authorities include (a) the economic situation, (b) workforce and (c) inflation.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of local authority fee rates to adult social care providers, which meet the costs of delivering care and enable providers to recruit and retain staff. We have therefore provided the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund to local authorities since 2023/24, with one of the three target areas that local authorities can spend their allocations on being to improve fee rates to providers.
A letter sent out to council leaders in January set out the expectation that in 2025/26, when commissioning services, local authorities should ensure fee levels for care and support services take account of the actual costs of care in their area, including inflationary and all other pressures, such as the rise in National Living Wage and the changes to employers National Insurance contributions.
As part of our monitoring of the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund grant conditions, and to understand fee rates more generally, local authorities are required to provide an annual return to the Department, including data on the fee rates they pay care providers. The Government publishes this data annually, with the latest data being available to view at the following link: