I am grateful to the noble Baroness. She asked about the local authority stock take. The results of the recent stock take in relation to implementation of the Care Act for January and February reported a positive picture overall regarding local authority preparedness. Specifically, the stock take’s headline findings reported that 99% of councils say that are very or fairly confident that they will be able to deliver the Care Act reforms from April 2015, compared to 97% of councils in stock take 2 and 90% in stock take 1. Of the four authorities which reported low confidence in stock take 2, three are now fairly confident and one is very confident; one authority has gone from fairly to not very confident.
Seventy-five per cent of councils say that they are on track in 2015-16 in their preparations for the Care Act, the remainder being slightly behind. Confidence has increased on six out of 10 proxy measures from stock take 2 to stock take 3. The exceptions are self-funders, carers’ assessment costs and information, advice and advocacy.
We have already invested more than £5 million in developing a suite of support materials, learning modules and other tools to help councils implement the Act. This is in addition to £23 million of investment in regional and local support that we have provided this year.
The noble Baroness referred to the transition order and regretted the fact that, in her view, it had been published rather late in the day. We set out the approach to transition in the statutory guidance published last October. The joint implementation programme of the Department of Health, the Local Government Association and ADASS has supported transition conversations with local authorities since that time. We do not think that anything in the transition order will have come as a surprise to local authorities.
The noble Baroness referred to the JCSI report, which pointed out that a particular consequential amendment had been omitted from the order. We accept
that paragraph 95 of the Schedule to the 2015 order should have amended Section 1(2) to (5) of the Personal Care at Home Act 2010. Failure to do so was an oversight. Those subsections make some prospective amendments to Section 15 of the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Act 2003. The issue here, however, is that the 2010 Act is not yet in force and there are currently no plans to commence it. The department will ensure that if the provisions of the 2010 Act are commenced, the necessary consequential amendments to Section 1(2) to (5) will be made in the same order using the consequential amendment powers in the Care Act 2014. In summary, while we regret the missed amendment, the omission has no practical effect, and we will have ample opportunity to correct it if the relevant legislation is ever commenced.