Council spending swallowed up by adult social care
PA MediaA city council's budget is increasingly being swallowed up by adult social care costs, according to official figures.
The cost of a providing the service across Newcastle jumped from £96.6m in 2018-19 to £161m in 2024-25 - the second biggest increase in the country when compared to its total spending.
Newcastle City Council's adult social care services provide support for people with disabilities, health issues, those leaving hospital and carers.
Labour, which runs the council, said it was already in the process of changing its care services in Newcastle by introducing new community teams and the carer's allowance had been raised nationally.
A Labour spokesperson said Newcastle's Social CarePoint teams had prevented people from being admitted to hospital or care homes and allowed people to stay at home and live as independently as possible.
"Further changes are planned to integrate with children's services to ensure a seamless transition and a rollout of the Connect to Work programme will allow adults to gain the confidence and support they need to achieve paid employment," they said.
Connor Shotton, Conservative candidate for Kingston Park and Dinnington, said his party would cut social care costs at the council by merging departments which "share responsibilities".
"We would look line by line at the budget to look at merging the departments together to create less back office and put that back into frontline service."
Mr Shotton said energy, communications and human resources departments could be merged with other teams.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said investing in social care saves money in the health service and its national plans to boost care would free up 5,000 hospital beds.
"We need to give unpaid carers a fair deal, including more social care support and guaranteed respite care, and tackle the waiting list by filling the tens of thousands of carer vacancies through funding a new higher carers minimum wage," they said.
A Green Party spokesperson said it aimed to "properly" fund social care though "fairer taxation".
"We'd focus locally on shifting more support earlier so fewer people reach crisis, improving pay and stability in the care workforce, and joining services up better with the NHS and community organisations," they said.
Reform UK has been contacted for comment.
Growing care costs
In 2018-19, adult social care costs made up 36% of Newcastle City Council's total service spend, excluding education, but this grew to 45% in 2024-25.
This proportional increase was the second highest in the country, after Hammersmith and Fulham, which increased from 31% to 41%.
The data was published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but the analysis excluded education costs because of the rise in academisation.
In the north-east of England, Sunderland City Council also saw a large increase in the proportion of its budget spent on adult social care - from 33% in 2018-19 to 40% in 2024-25.
Meanwhile, Hartlepool and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Councils both saw a large increase in the amount of their budgets spent on child social care.
Hartlepool spent 24% of its total expenditure on child social care in 2018-19, which increased to 34% in 2024-25.
The figures in Redcar and Cleveland increased from 25% to 35% in the same period.
