Services and information

Background

In October 2021, the Infection Control and Testing Fund was extended until 31st March 2022, with an extra £388 million of funding to support the care sector to put in place crucial measures over the winter period, bringing the total ring-fenced funding for infection prevention and control to almost £1.5 billion and support for testing to almost £400 million in care settings.

Furthermore, to boost the workforce through the winter until the end of March 2022, we announced thefirst and second workforce recruitment and retention funds to support local authorities to address adult social care workforce capacity pressures in their geographical area through recruitment and retention activity in winter 2021 to 2022. These were worth £162.5 million and £300 million respectively.

In recognition of the increased pressure on existing funding sources caused by the Omicron variant,the health care provider anounced on 29 December 2021 that it is providing £60 million additional funding for January 2022. The care provider will continue to monitor the progress of Omicron and its potential impact on the care sector.

Purpose

The purpose of this fund is to support the sector with measures already covered by the infection prevention and control (IPC) allocation of the Infection Control and Testing Fund (round 3) to reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmission within and between care settings through effective IPC practices. Additionally, this funding may also be used to increase ventilation in care homes, and to enhance local authorities’ current direct payment offer particularly when the only way a person’s care needs can be met is by a friend or family member, or to enhance support for carers. It may also be used to pay for temporary staffing to cover increased staff absence caused by COVID-19 and maintain staffing levels and workforce capacity.

This is a new grant that is separate and in addition to the existing

Expectations

We expect local authorities to work closely with providers to determine how funding should best be spent, including paying funding directly to providers where appropriate.

Local authorities can choose to pass some or all of this funding directly to care providers that are registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). A care provider is legally required to register with the CQC where they carry on a regulated activity set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. If a local authority transfers any amount of the funding directly to CQC-registered care providers, the local authority will carry the responsibility for ensuring that the funding is used in line with the purpose of the fund. The local authority will therefore need to put in place effective processes to ensure an efficient recovery of funds in the case of fraudulent payments.

Local authorities must have in place appropriate oversight of deliverables and outputs from any amount of funding passed to a provider and have due regard to their responsibilities with respect to international agreements on subsidy control. This should be sufficient to ensure the funding is spent in line with the intended purpose and allow a local authority to verify or monitor the accuracy of reporting.

Care providers

Local authorities should work constructively and collaboratively with providers receiving passported funds to ensure that it imposes conditions on the provider requiring that:

• the recipient care providers uses it for new expenditure that delivers additional activity that has not already been funded by the Infection Control and Testing Fund, the first and second Workforce Recruitment and Retention Fund or other sources of public funding. It is acceptable to use this funding to ‘top up’ measures funded by existing sources of public funding where this is required
• the provider will return any grant amount to the local authority that is not spent on those measures
• if requested to do so, the care provider should provide the local authority or the department receipts or such other information as they request to evidence that the funding has been spent in accordance with the measures above
• if requested to do so, the care provider should provide the department or the local authority with an explanation of any matter relating to funding and its use by the recipient as they think necessary or expedient for the purposes of being assured that the money has been used in an appropriate way in respect of those measures