East Sussex funding gap: Have your say on supported accommodation for adults with mental health needs

Our funding gap

East Sussex County Council (the Council) has a net budget of £538.1 million for the year from April 2024 to March 2025. Our net budget is the money we have to spend which is financed by business rates, council tax receipts and the revenue support grant we get from the national government.

We expect our net budget for next year to be a similar amount. This means that we are facing a financial gap of £55 million for 2025/26. The financial gap is the difference between the funding available and the cost of keeping services at their present level.

Most local authorities are facing similar pressures. We face this gap even though we are a well-run and efficient council which has saved £140 million since 2010 and found new ways to work effectively through difficult times. Unfortunately, the cost pressures we face now are so great that efficiency alone is not enough and the limited reserves of money we have available would not be enough to meet the financial gap. Most importantly, reserves can only be spent once and could not repeatedly fill the financial gap which councils face every year. It is also not possible to close the whole gap by raising council tax as the increase that would be required is beyond the limit set by national Government.

We are legally obliged to close the financial gap and balance our budget. This means that some tough decisions will have to be made and reduced services are possible in all areas. When making these decisions, our priority will be to maintain protection and support, wherever possible, for the most vulnerable people in our community.

There is more information about why we have to make savings and what we are doing to highlight the issues local authorities face with the national Government on our website at https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/your-council/finance/east-sussex-our-funding-gap.

Social care support

Adult Social Care and Health is a department of East Sussex County Council. We work with people aged 18 and over who live in East Sussex. We help people live healthy and independent lives, whatever that may look like for them. We look at people's strengths, capabilities, support network, community and difficulties and work with them to find solutions.

The Council has a legal duty to provide social care support to those who are eligible. About three quarters of the East Sussex budget goes on providing social care for children and adults, with adult social care accounting for nearly half of the budget (48%). Care and support for adults is not free and we charge for most of our services. The amount people pay depends on their financial situation, but most people have to pay something towards their care, with the remaining costs paid by the Council.

Nationally, social care is under pressure due to a combination of demographic, financial, and systemic factors. East Sussex is no stranger to this, facing unique challenges which impact on the need for support and services in the county. Around 25% of the East Sussex population is over 65 compared to a national figure of 18%, average wages remain lower than the national average and 30,000 people in the county are living in some of the most deprived areas of England. We have also seen a 40% increase in the average weekly cost of providing care in East Sussex since 2020.

As people live longer, they may require care and support for longer, and their care and support needs are likely to become more complex over time. There is also evidence that the cost of living challenges have increased demand for care, as well as making people less able to afford their contribution towards the cost of care.

As social care is such a large part of the Council’s budget, we will need to make savings to services in this area too. Reduced services are likely, and we will need to review staff numbers, but the amount we need to save can’t be achieved through reducing the workforce alone.

Developing the savings proposals

Given the financial gap we are facing, we know it is impossible to avoid some of our residents being negatively affected by the difficult decisions that we need to make. We have tried our best to identify proposed savings that would have the least possible impact on people’s care and wellbeing.

We know too that many of our external partners in the NHS, local authorities, providers and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) are experiencing their own pressures in terms of demand for services and funding challenges. Where we can, we’ve tried to take that into account in looking for savings.

Our priority in Adult Social Care and Health is to meet our legal duties under the Care Act. To help us to do this, we have identified funding areas that we think need to be protected when we are looking at savings options.

The priority funding areas are:

• Community care budget: This budget covers the cost of care that is provided to adults who are eligible for social care support because of a disability or health condition. This budget is already under pressure because more people need our help, the cost of providing care is increasing, and our residents are increasingly struggling to pay their contribution towards the cost of care.

• Carers: As well as protecting the budget for community care which funds support for people who are eligible for social care support, we have tried to protect the direct support we provide to unpaid carers who are looking after their family members and friends. This is because carers play an invaluable role in meeting care and support needs for so many residents and reduce the amount of support residents need from other services.

• Voluntary and community enterprise sector (VCSE): These organisations make a huge contribution to preventing, reducing and delaying the need for care and support from the community care budget. For this reason, we want to protect the funding that we provide to support this sector as far as possible, particularly where we can demonstrate that services are supporting our statutory duties and other priority funding areas.

• Frontline workers: We need to ensure we have enough social work staff and occupational therapy workers to carry out assessments and put care and support in place. We also need to retain enough financial assessment staff to ensure we are funding those who are most in need and that people pay the correct contribution.

• Care market: We need to ensure we retain enough staff so that we can support the care market and ensure we have a good supply of services that deliver the best value.

How the service works now

The services affected by this proposal provide accommodation and support to adults aged 18+ with a recognised mental health need, who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The buildings that provide the accommodation are owned and managed by the service providers. The Council provides the funding for the on-site support element of the service for people living in the accommodation. Rental costs and any other charges are funded separately by the client, often through enhanced housing benefit. We work with the five district and borough councils in East Sussex to commission the services, as they have legal responsibility for housing.

There are 45 accommodation units across three buildings. These are a mixture of studio, one-bedroom flats, and shared accommodation where people have their own room but share kitchen and bathroom facilities.  

The supported accommodation services for adults with a mental health need operate out of three buildings:

• Pathways – Bexhill-on-Sea
• Hyde Gardens – Eastbourne
• Bal Edmund - Hastings

Support services are available to residents for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provided either by on-site staff, or with out-of-hours on-call management. The staff work with residents to develop a personalised and psychologically informed approach to support planning to help them develop independent living and tenancy sustainment skills. They also support residents to access training, qualifications and employment.

Most people stay in supported accommodation for between a year and 18 months. The need for the service means there are rarely vacancies and the service is currently full, with 45 people living in the three mental health supported accommodation buildings in Eastbourne, Hastings and Rother. The majority of referrals to the service come from the five district and borough Housing Teams in East Sussex. They refer individuals that they have a duty to provide accommodation to because they are assessed as being homeless or threatened with homelessness.  

What we are proposing to change

We are proposing to stop funding the on-site support offer that is provided to residents living in these accommodation services. Given the efficiency savings that providers have made in recent years, stopping this funding may mean the services have to close unless alternative funding could be found. This is because the individuals using the services have been identified as requiring a level of support greater than is available in standard temporary accommodation. If this support is removed the landlord may feel they are unable to continue to run the service. If the services did have to close, any residents living there would need to find alternative accommodation.

Why we are proposing this saving

We recognise the value of these services and the role they play in preventing the need for other types of support, including adult social care. That is why we have protected these services over the last 10 years of budget reductions. Unfortunately, the financial pressures we face mean that we need to look at all of our spending closely.

The legal responsibility for providing advice, help and housing to those who are homeless, or at risk of becoming so, lies with district and borough councils. There is no legal requirement for us to fund the on-site support services and many local authorities have already reduced or withdrawn funding for similar services. We are therefore proposing to stop funding the support element of these services.  

How people and organisations would be affected

The withdrawal of this funding makes it likely that the services would have to close. Any residents living there would need to be found alternative accommodation. Whilst it may be possible for some of them to move out in a planned way, there is a significant risk that service users may become homeless. This is due to the lack of affordable housing locally.

If services closed, it would limit the housing options available to those with a mental health need who are homeless, or at risk of becoming so in future. There is a risk that we would see an increase in street homelessness in East Sussex and that more people would be at risk of death and suicide on the streets.

We have funded these services because we know they reduce people’s need for support from other parts of the system. Ending the on-site support provision funding would likely place a significant additional pressure on district and borough housing services and increase their costs for temporary accommodation. District and borough authorities face similar financial pressures and may struggle to cope with the additional burdens this proposal may create if the services were forced to close.

Services supporting rough sleepers and those who are homeless are also likely to see an increase in demand. That includes services funded by the Council and those provided by the voluntary and community sector.

It is likely, too, that if the accommodation closed, we would see an increased need for mental health support and safeguarding, with more people potentially becoming eligible for support from us as a result of their needs increasing. Health services, including GPs and mental health services, would likely also see an increased need for people to access their services.

A priority for the consultation is to work with our partners to help them explore the options for keeping services open. If that’s not possible, we would work with them to transition people to new accommodation, and if possible see what other services could potentially support adults with mental health needs in future.