THE leader of Swindon Borough Council is hoping that this week’s budget will bring a welcome cash boost for social care.

Chancellor Philip Hammond will deliver his budget statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday and he has come under pressure from local authorities and MPs to allocate badly-needed funds to a social care system teetering on a financial cliff edge.

While the details of the budget proposals are being closely guarded, there have been suggestions that Mr Hammond many have been persuaded to open his cheque book.

If that turns out to be the case, the move will be welcomed by the leader of Swindon Borough Council, David Renard.

“I’ve been looking at information that has been coming out over the last couple of days and what they appear to be suggesting is that they will be investing about £1.3 billion more in social care,” he said.

“If that is the case then I think local government across the country will receive that gratefully although I think we need to acknowledge the fact that it won’t solve the problem - it’s a temporary fix that will help us get through the next 12 months.

“There have been various estimates from the King’s Fund and others suggesting that £5 billion is probably nearer the sort of sum of money that is needed.”

Coun Renard said that one of the difficulties with the increase in social care costs is that with so few of the population seeing first hand how the money is spent, it can be challenging to impress on people just how crucial the additional spending is.

“Many of these services are very costly to provide and the council tax payer cannot be expected to continually fund this because of the huge increase in costs required across the country.”

The leader added that he has been in regular contact with Swindon’s two Conservative MPs and is confident that they understand the scale of the challenge and have been lobbying accordingly.

The government made an attempt at bridging the gap in social care funding last year by allowing councils to increase the portion of council tax earmarked solely for care spending to go up by an additional three per cent each year for the next two years rather than two per cent for the next three.

However, this was not new money, instead it was taken from a pot previously used to fund the new homes bonus scheme which incentivised house building.

Swindon eventually ended up receiving £855,000 less from the government overall as a result.