Council facing judicial review threat from care home providers
Northumberland County Council is facing the threat of a judicial review from Care North East (CNE) over a decision taken in January about base fee rates for care homes for older people in 2023/24.
CNE Northumberland is the trade association that represents about 24 of the 71 care homes that operate in Northumberland.
The judicial review claim was referred to by Director of Adult Social Care Neil Bradley during discussion by the Council’s Cabinet about the use of Market Sustainability and Improvement grant.
Speaking at the meeting on 9 May, cabinet member Wendy Pattison said that the government had allocated £3.6m to Northumberland County Council for the 2023-24 financial year to allow it to improve adult social care.
She revealed that the council “must submit a plan to the Department of Health and Social Care by May 24 on how we're going to spend this money”.
She said a "significant portion" of money will help deal with "inflationary pressures".
Director of Adult Social Care Mr Neil Bradley said the CNE have raised a judicial review “around how the council had approached the extraordinary inflation that was applicable to the sector and what we've done in relation to that in terms of certain fees for this year".
He told the meeting that in his view the judicial review claim would to some extent be superseded by the Cabinet’s decisions on the proposed additional funding, though it would be a decision for Care North East whether to continue a claim.
He also summarised points which Care North East members had raised about the proposals for the use of the additional funding after becoming aware of them and asked the Cabinet to consider those points before making its decision.
The first objection brought by CNE is that they believed the Cabinet was being recommended to allocate a “disproportionately large amount of the funding to the Home Care Market rather than the care home market”, said Neil Bradley.
The second objection from CNE is that they should have been consulted at an earlier stage about the recommendations.
Mr Bradley told the Cabinet that he had some sympathy with that objection, but that the timescales were a result of the national deadlines.
The trade association also shared concerns about the impact on care homes of a proposal to fund higher pay scales for home care workers than for care home staff, the cabinet meeting was told.
Responding to the issue, Bradley said the key pressure in Northumberland is around the home care market to a greater degree than the care home market.
He noted that CNE “haven't really raised any significant points on that other than general statements that they think care homes are also under pressure”.
He added: “We're not seeing significant evidence of care homes being in serious financial difficulties at this point in time. Our key problem is that we can't source home care at the minute, but we can source care home placements.”
Care North East have been approached for comment.
Lottie Winson
