Plymouth to get social care boost

The government's increased grants

An extra £31 million is planned to be spent on children’s services, adult social care and homelessness prevention in Plymouth in the next financial year starting in April.

The government has increased grants to the council from £78 million to £91 million, council leader Tudor Evans (Lab, Ham) told cabinet members this week, which will help with these main pressures on the council’s budget.

The cabinet unanimously supported a draft budget for 2025/6 which will go through two days of scrutiny next week before being presented to the full council in February.

Three-quarters of the authority’s total revenue spend each year goes on providing care for the elderly, supporting vulnerable adults and children, providing temporary accommodation for the homeless and delivering home-to-school transport.

Mr Evans said systematic issues in social care had taken councils to the brink.

A report for the cabinet showed the cost of specialist residential placements for vulnerable children and home-to-school transport for children with special education needs and disabilities (Send) means the council is still facing an overspend of £8 million in the current year, which will need to be addressed in future years.

Cllr Evans said with costs rising and tight resources, it had been a “Herculean task” making the sums add up.

“There will never be enough money, but we are grateful to the government for the additional resources,” he said.

He said he looked forward to a multi-year funding settlement for councils which is expected to start in 2026. Currently councils are allocated funding from the government annually to help fund services.

Other income comes from council tax, fees and charges and council assets.

The leader called it a “positive” budget where the authority had not had to close any libraries, kept the £300,000 uplift on grass cutting to allow more frequent cutting of playparks and busy junctions, boosted the net-zero allocation to £63 million, given additional resources to key demand-led services like social care, increased funding to Plymouth Active Leisure and had a five-year “ambitious” capital programme totalling £396 million.

The capital programme is funded through grants, borrowing, contributions from developers and sales of assets. Thirty million pounds will be spent on homes for the city, £47 million in the city centre and £97 million on the economy over the next five years.

Cllr Evans told the cabinet that more than £5 million of reserves had been called on to balance the budget.

Additional costs total over £50 million, but these would be offset by grants and resources.

“We need £14 million of savings to achieve that, but we will with do that by making efficiencies,” he said.

The council’s finance officer David Northey said some savings would be made by releasing budgets not been fully spent.

“The pain should be minimal” he said

But in the report, Mr Northey said there there are still “significant risks”, with a gross revenue expenditure budget of more than £500 million, given continuing uncertainty about future resourcing from central government, the economy, and the council’s comparatively low levels of  financial reserves.

Additional grants from the government for next year include £5 million for social care, a £1.4 million children’s social care prevention grant and a £6.5 million new recovery grant.

An extra £724,000 has been granted for homelessness prevention.

A New Homes Bonus has been reduced from £43,000 to £32,000.

The city’s Labour party expects money for councils to be based on deprivation in future.

It says that in Plymouth, where most people live in homes with a lower council tax banding but where demand for services is high, resources are expected to increase.

Council tax will bring in around £150 million for the council in 2025/26 but there will be a larger increase if the boundaries are redrawn to include part of the South Ham in the forthcoming local government reorganisation.

The council supports one in five people with council tax reductions, costing £22 million.

Cabinet member for housing and communities Cllr Chris Penberthy (Lab, St Peter and the Waterfront) said most of these people are of working age: “It’s the right thing to do but it is a tough decision for us to make,” he said.

Plymouth will set next year’s council tax rate next month. The most it can go up without a referendum is 4.99 per cent.

From April next year, in line with other councils in Devon, it will charging second home owners twice the standard rate. This will also apply to homes which have been empty for more than a year.

The council will also increase its fees and charges by around five per cent from April. Car parking charges will be looked at separately.