Fair Cost of Care and Market Sustainability

Fair cost of care and market sustainability

As part of the government’s adult social care reform agenda, local authorities must complete a fair cost of care exercise to arrive at a shared understanding with providers to identify the “fair cost of care”.

In addition, local authorities are required to publish a Market Sustainability Plan detailing how they plan to move towards a fair cost of care (where this is not already being paid) over the next three years.

The outcomes from this exercise for Westminster are set out in the documents below.

Annex A

Annex B

Annex C

The Department for Health and Social Care has said it recognises the challenges associated with carrying out a cost of care exercise and has taken on board feedback that some data samples do not reflect the actual local cost of care.

The outcome of the ‘cost of care’ exercise is not intended to replace how local authorities such as Westminster set fees as part of their commissioning processes, or how they negotiate individual contracts with suppliers or other agencies.