02.11.17
DH announcement on sleep-in shift pay for care workers ‘does not end uncertainty’
The government has today launched a compliance scheme to aid social care providers who may have incorrectly underpaid care workers.
Employers can opt-in to the scheme to give them up to a year to pay off the wages, but councils say the plan is not enough.
The Social Care Compliance Scheme (SCCS) gives providers an extra three months to pay workers after they have identified the arrears. This gives care employers until March 2019 to fully pay off costs.
Problems in the system arose from a lack of clarity from the government as to how the new living wage should be applied to sleep-in shift workers after it was introduced in April last year.
Once the issue was discovered, there were major fears that the massive output of funds all at one time would cause serious damage to service providers.
The government says it is exploring options to minimise any impact on the sector, adding that it has opened discussions with the European Commission to determine whether any support, if deemed necessary, would be subject to EU state aid rules.
LGA bosses say the government should take responsibility for this crisis and provide new funding for the payment of these wages.
Cllr Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the organisation’s Community Wellbeing Board, commented: “It was misleading government guidance in the past which caused the confusion over whether National Minimum or Living Wage should apply for sleep-in shifts. Now the government has clarified the position, it needs to provide genuinely new funding to deal with back-payment.
“Councils already face a £2.3bn annual social care funding gap by 2020 and pressures across the sector – particularly on providers – are acute. If the government does not fund the historic liability then we are likely to see more care providers going bust, more contracts being handed back to councils, and care workers being made unemployed.
“The focus of this announcement is very much on historic liabilities. The government cannot ignore the additional costs of sleep-ins in the here and now, and into the future. It is wrong to assume the Spring Budget £2bn for social care can cover this additional burden. The forthcoming Budget needs to inject new money into social care to meet this pressure.”
Earlier this year the government waived further penalties for sleep-in shifts underpayment arising before 26 July 2017 in order to minimise the impact of the problems on social care providers.
As of 1 November, enforcement action has been reinstated.
Top image: Gregory Lee
Have you got a story to tell? Would you like to become a PSE columnist? If so, click here.