Commenting on Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Autumn Budget on Wednesday 27th October, George Lindars-Hammond, Sheffield Labour’s executive member for health and social care said:
“The proposals in the budget to raise the minimum wage to £9.50 are welcome and will mean a significant pay rise for many of Sheffield’s care workers. It is a great shame, however, that many low paid workers who receive Universal credit have recently had £1000 a year cruelly cut from their income, and the budget has done very little to compensate for this”
“Low pay in care is sadly endemic and figures from Skills for Care suggest that average pay for our city’s care home workers in particular remains well below £9.50. As a council, we have invested £4.2m this year to raise the pay of care workers and I’m proud of the way we’ve supported the care sector through the pandemic. However, the truth is that social care is at breaking point and requires significant extra funding immediately.
“After the missed opportunity of the care cap proposals, which are likely to cost Councils more rather than provide funding, the Chancellor should have used the opportunity at this budget to provide genuine long-term financing to support Councils to fund much deserved higher wages in care and to ensure a sustainable social care system for the future.”
Notes
Skills for Care’s latest analysis of the Sheffield care sector is here: https://public.tableau.com/shared/X68BF47W7?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link Note that the snapshot is from before the 2021 minimum wage rise when the minimum wage was at £8.72 rather than the current £8.91.