Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if his Department will take steps to provide additional funding to local authorities to help support social care providers at risk of closure due to increasing (a) energy and (b) other operational costs.

The Government is committed to working with local authorities to manage the pressures of inflation on adult social care.

Through the new Energy Bill Relief Scheme, the Government is acting to provide a price reduction to ensure that all businesses and other non-domestic customers, such as social care providers, are protected from excessively high energy bills over the winter period. The price reduction will run initially for 6 months covering energy use from 1 October 2022 until 31 March 2023.

The Government has announced a £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund to speed up the safe discharge of people from hospitals into social care support. A full announcement will be made in due course.