Andrew Dilnot has confirmed expectations that his commission on funding social care would propose a cap of £35,000 on individual contributions for their care today.
The economist’s much anticipated report also called for the means-test threshold for state support to be raised from the current £23,250 to £100,000.
Professor Dilnot’s final report also recommended that councils should be allowed to charge interest for loans made to residents to cover care costs in advance of the sale of their homes to cover their care costs.
He said the current care system was not fit for purpose and was “confusing, unfair, and unsustainable”.
“People can’t protect themselves against the risk of very high care costs and risk losing all their assets, including their house,” he said.
“This problem will only get worse if left as it is, with the most vulnerable in our society being the ones to suffer.
“Under our proposed system everybody who gets free support from the state now will continue to do so and everybody else would be better off.”
Professor Dilnot said he expected to see a white paper incorporating the commission’s work by Easter next year.
The commission said it anticipated its proposals would cost between £1.3bn and £2.2bn, depending on what level the cost-cap was set at. It called for the government to set up a working group to explore ways that financial-services markets could be developed to help residents meet the cost of their care contributions up to the cap.
In combination with the call for more government resources, Professor Dilnot also said there was a need for greater openness over the level of resources being made available locally.
He said that while the government had made extra social care-funding available in the last spending review, “the impact of the wider local government settlement appears to have meant that the additional resources have not found their way to social care budgets in some areas”.
The commission said its call for changes to the current system of “deferred payment” loans that councils make to homeowners who need care was based on evidence that their use was currently “patchy” and that the inability to charge for the service was a disincentive.
“We believe it would be sensible for local authorities to be allowed to charge interest to recover their costs to make the scheme cost neutral, and to remove the disincentive they currently face in promoting the scheme,” the report said.
5 Readers' comments