What do the government’s plans for devolving Attendance Allowance to local government mean for councils, older people and care providers?
The government has proposed transferring Attendance Allowance from the DWP to local authorities, as part of its plans to reform local government financing and give councils new spending responsibilities.
Attendance Allowance is a cash payment that currently supports around 1.24 million older people in England with the costs of living with a disability, regardless of their financial means or whether they receive any care.
In this way, the Attendance Allowance system reaches significantly more people than the local authority adult social care system, represents a different type of public spending and rests on a profoundly different underlying philosophy.
While the government has promised to protect existing recipients, moving Attendance Allowance into local government would represent a historic change affecting millions of older people in future.
This report reviews academic research on the reach and distributional effects of Attendance Allowance, and evaluates the pros and cons of options for transferring it to local authorities.
You can download a copy of this report here:
Attendance Allowance and Local Government – Examining the evidence and the options
This report has been made possible by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Accounts of the Universities of East Anglia and Essex.
Author: James Lloyd, Director, Strategic Society Centre