Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England - 2020-21

This is the fifth year in which the adult social care activity and finance data have been brought together in an official statistics report.

Activity data is sourced from the Short and Long Term (SALT) return, while finance data is taken from the Adult Social Care Finance Return (ASC-FR). In previous years, the report included analysis of the Deferred Payments Agreement (DPA) collection. This is now a separate publication. 

This report presents the main themes only, based on mandatory data, at England level. Regional and local analysis can be found in the publication reference tables. The full data collected including voluntary elements of the data are available in both Excel and CSV format from the Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England - 2020-2. 

Further information around the data collections is available. 

NHS Digital plans to continue to develop and release user friendly outputs relating to this data.

Adult social care activity provided or arranged by local authorities covers a wide range of services including long term and short-term care, plus support to carers. Clients may take a variety of different pathways through the system, according to their needs.

This report will look in detail at the breakdown of expenditure by local authorities on adult social care, and the activity that is provided or arranged by the local authorities. As such, it does not cover adult social care activity and expenditure that is provided or funded elsewhere, for example, if the care is arranged and funded by the client without any involvement from the local authority.

While the two collections have been designed to be as complementary as possible, there are some differences in how data is categorised and so direct comparisons between the two sources should be made with care.

It is possible however, to consider broader similarities and differences in the trends shown in the data. For more information see the “How can the data be used?” section below.

Where there are differences in the definitions used between the collections these will be clearly pointed out in this document, and you can also find further information in the Adult Social Care Data Dictionary which sets out the definitions for each of the collections, as well as within the guidance documents for each collection. If you require any further information about how the data used in this report can be compared, please contact us at [email protected].

The finance elements of this report focus primarily on gross current expenditure. This is defined as the total expenditure less capital charges, and less all income except for client contributions.

Finance data within the commentary of this report is rounded to the nearest million. Figures in billions are reported to one decimal place unless this does not sufficiently highlight the range in which case there may be exceptions to two decimal places.

Activity data within the commentary of this report is rounded to the nearest five.

Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.

All data is collected from Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs) in England, however for ease of reading CASSRs will be referred to as local authorities throughout this report.

This is an annual publication and the next release with 2021-22 data is planned for autumn 2022.

Due to a serious cyber-attack, Hackney Council has been unable to submit 2020-21 data to NHS Digital. There was also missing ASC-FR data for Rochdale.

In order to present England level statistics that can be compared to previous years, NHS Digital have calculated a range of estimates based on different scenarios to account for the missing data. These can be summarised as:

• add 2019-20 missing local authority data to 2020-21 totals
• uplift 2019-20 missing local authority data by a factor equal to the national percentage increase between 2019-20 and 2020-21, and add to 2020-21 totals
• uplift 2019-20 missing local authority data by a factor equal to the regional percentage increase between 2019-20 and 2020-21, and add to 2020-21 totals
• uplift 2019-20 missing local authority data by a factor equal to the nearest neighbour percentage increase between 2019-20 and 2020-21, and add to 2020-21 totals

These estimates have been applied to the key measures only, giving a range of:

• between £21.24bn and £21.33bn gross current expenditure
• between £15.63bn and £15.69bn gross current expenditure on long term support
• between 841,225 and 841,285 clients supported throughout the year with long term support
• between 1,915,580 and 1,916,755 new requests for support for which an outcome was determined in the year

Because these ranges of estimates are fairly narrow, we have chosen to only present the first scenario (add 2019-20 missing local authority data to 2020-21 totals) in the Key Findings, and throughout the report, to calculate the England and regional totals last year’s data for Hackney (SALT and ASC-FR) and Rochdale (ASC-FR) was used.

For the 2020-21 collections NHS Digital used inbuilt validation checks within the data templates and post-submission data quality reports for each collection to identify logical inconsistencies in the data, and where the data submitted is an outlier against either local and national data or against submissions from previous years. Local authorities could then review and resubmit data ahead of the deadline or provide explanations for any identified issues.

Both the SALT and ASC-FR data returns contain complex elements and this, combined with the aggregate nature of the collections, means that some data quality issues are not always immediately apparent. Furthermore, the annual nature of the collections means that any issues with the submitted data can sometimes take a while to be identified and worked through with local authorities.

Through the respective collection Working Groups, NHS Digital work with local authorities and other stakeholders to continually develop the data template and the accompanying guidance documents to improve clarity and ease of completion. A DHSC project to convert the current aggregate return for social care activity to client level is currently underway. The envisaged benefits are increased value from the data collected, both through wider and more flexible availability of social care data together with the health links; a simpler return leading to reduced burden; and greater flexibility for future developments than aggregate returns such as SALT allow. DHSC and NHS Digital have engaged with all parts of the system, including all system suppliers, LGA, ADASS, NHS England and a range of individual LAs. Further information is available here: Adult Social Care Client Level Data - NHS Arden & GEM CSU (ardengemcsu.nhs.uk)

Some issues impacting the data associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have been highlighted at the start of this report. Throughout the report we will identify data quality issues where appropriate to aid user interpretation. Further detail on the data quality of both collections can be found in the accompanying data quality outputs.