Tag Archives: ukcuts

Liverpool Council Leader says cuts are “heartbreaking”

Liverpool Council Leader says cuts are “heartbreaking”

« on: Today at 05:29:16 PM »

Liverpool City Council’s leader has said having to find savings of £91m has been “absolutely heartbreaking”.

Labour leader Joe Anderson said he was “so angry and so devastated” at decisions the council has had to make.

Cuts revealed on Thursday will affect childrens’ services, leisure centres, libraries, and voluntary groups, and result in hundreds of job losses.

Mr Anderson said everyone in the city would be affected by cuts which are having to be made.

“When somebody says every family or every service within the city is going to be affected, they are absolutely right,” he said.

“And that’s why your roads won’t be getting cleansed as much as we want, there’ll be no street cleaning as much as you used to get.

“Libraries will have to reduce their hours or close, leisure centres will have to reduce their hours or close, the potholes won’t be getting filled.

“Every part of our life in this city is going to be affected.”

Radical Welfare Reform Plans Are Unveiled

Radical Welfare Reform Plans Are Unveiled

11:50am UK, Thursday February 17, 2011

Joey Jones, deputy political editor

The Government is outlining the full details of its flagship changes to the benefits system later.

Iain Duncan Smith’s Welfare Reform Bill involves a radical overhaul, aimed at simplifying the system and tackling the culture that he believes encourages people to choose a life on benefits.

The proposals include replacing work-related benefits with a single, universal credit, designed to ensure people are always better off when they are employed.

The Government intends to close the loophole which enables some couples to receive more living apart.

But there is also a significant climbdown, with ministers shelving a controversial plan to cut people’s housing benefit by 10% if they were in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance for more than a year.

The benefits system… doesn’t just allow people to act irresponsibly, but often actively encourages them to do so

Prime Minister David Cameron
In a speech to mark the publication of the bill, the Prime Minister is expected to say that the “collective culture of responsibility” that used to be the bedrock of the welfare system has been lost.

He will argue that there are some individuals who, “with no regret or remorse, intentionally rip off the system,” but that more broadly, the system itself is at fault.

Thousands more will have to sell homes for elderly care

Thousands more will have to sell homes for elderly care

Thousands more elderly people will be forced to pay to stay in care homes as a result of unannounced cuts in funding. Ministers are effectively reducing the level of savings above which pensioners must meet their own fees, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

By James Kirkup,

Political Correspondent 10:00PM GMT 16 Feb 2011

 A Whitehall document shows that the reduction has been imposed to “raise additional revenue” and will have an “impact” on older people and their families. It means that more will be dragged over the means-test threshold for care home charges and will have to pay full fees, typically more than £500 a week. That will raise fears of greater numbers being forced to sell their homes to fund residential care in old age. Charities said the decision would hurt the vulnerable and cause “considerable distress”. Around 250,000 people aged over 65 are estimated to be funded by councils in residential care homes, and the figure is forecast to grow steadily in the coming decades. Charges are based on a means test, under which anyone with savings and assets, including a house, worth more than £23,250 must pay the full fees. A survey last year said that average care home fees were now more than £25,000 a year. In the Home Counties, they frequently exceeded £45,000. Anyone with assets above the threshold must pay full fees until their value has been reduced below the limit, when councils pick up some of the cost. That can quickly reduce the savings of older people who have passed on houses and other assets to their children as a tax-planning precaution against death duties. Normally, the threshold increases each year to take account of inflation and rising values of assets such as houses. Ten years ago, it was £18,500. But the Coalition has quietly decided to freeze the limit for at least two years. The move is likely to amount to a real-terms cut in the threshold of almost 10 per cent. A lower capital limit of £14,250 – above which councils pay part of the fees – has also been frozen. The decision was disclosed in a Department of Health document. Dated Jan 28, it makes clear that the move is to raise more money from elderly people. “In the context of the Spending Review 2010, ministers have taken the decision not to increase the capital limits,” it says. “The intention is to help protect the level and quality of social care services by enabling local authorities to raise additional revenue to pay for these services, from residential care charges.” The capital limits will not be reviewed until the next local government finance settlement in the autumn of 2012, the document says. In the meantime, the department will “monitor the impact of not increasing the capital limits on care home residents and their families, and on local authority budgets”. An estimated 100,000 people in residential care finance themselves. Up to 20,000 pensioners a year are estimated to have to sell their homes to do so. The Department of Health said freezing the threshold “will only result in most residents having to pay for about one additional week of care” – around £500. Michelle Mitchell, the charity director at Age UK, said the decision would “cause many to wonder whether the Government thinks older people are immune to the recession or the effects of inflation”. She said: “This is a measure that is once again hitting the most vulnerable and is certain to cause considerable distress.” Conservatives and Liberal Democrats fought the election promising new rules that would prevent people having to sell homes to fund care. In the House of Commons yesterday, David Cameron was challenged over the rising costs, and insisted the Coalition was acting to help older people. “Far from cutting the money that is going into social care, we have increased by £2 billion the money going into adult social care because we know how important it is,” the Prime Minister told MPs. The Telegraph yesterday reported comments by Lord Warner, part of a commission reviewing long-term care, suggesting that middle-class baby-boomers should expect to sell their homes to fund care in later life. The Department of Health said the freeze in the capital limit was “unfortunate” but necessary “in light of the current economic situation”.

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