Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with Birmingham City Council regarding local residential and nursing care capacity.

Local authorities are best placed to understand and plan for the needs of their population, which is why, under the Care Act 2014, they are tasked with the duty to shape their care markets to meet the diverse needs of all local people. This includes using local population and market data to inform commissioning decisions and drawing on providers’ insights into local market sustainability and workforce pressures to ensure that people have a choice of appropriate and high quality care services in their local area.