Guidance

Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund - Workforce Fund: grant determination and conditions 2023 to 2024: No 31/6803

Updated 31 August 2023

Applies to England

The Minister of State for Care (‘the minister’), in exercise of the powers conferred by section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003, makes the following determination:

Citation

1) This determination may be cited as the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund - Workforce Fund Grant Determination (2023 to 2024): No 31/6803

Purpose of the grant

2) The purpose of the grant is to provide additional support to local authorities in England towards expenditure lawfully incurred or to be incurred by them. It is intended to enable local authorities to make tangible improvements to adult social care, in particular to increase social care capacity through increasing social care workforce capacity and retention, reducing social care waiting times and increasing fee rates paid to social care providers.

Determination

3) The minister determines the authorities to which grant is to be paid and the amount of grant to be paid as set in annex A of this determination.

4) The grant will be paid as a one-off payment, expected in September 2023.

Grant conditions

5) Pursuant to section 31(4) of the Local Government Act 2003, the minister determines that the grant will be paid subject to the conditions specified in annex B.

Treasury consent

6) Before making this determination in relation to local authorities in England, the minister obtained the consent of the Treasury.

Signed by authority of the Minister of State for Care.

Megan Bradish, Deputy Director

Department of Health and Social Care

28 July 2023

Annex A: Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund - Workforce Fund allocations to local authorities 2023 to 2024

The 2023 to 2024 Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (MSIF) Workforce Fund is distributed using the adult social care relative needs formula (ASC RNF). Where there were changes to the local authority boundaries, we used the same ASC RNF allocation shares for each local authority as those used in the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) final local government finance settlement for 2023 to 2024.

Table 1: MSIF Workforce Fund allocations to local authorities 2023 to 2024

Local authority	MSIF Workforce Fund allocations to local authorities 2023 to 2024
Barking and Dagenham	£1,388,614
Barnet	£2,201,389
Barnsley	£1,883,401
Bath and North East Somerset	£1,109,832
Bedford	£944,152
Bexley	£1,411,903
Birmingham	£8,517,116
Blackburn with Darwen	£1,162,550
Blackpool	£1,374,354
Bolton	£2,114,114
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole	£2,661,297
Bracknell Forest	£550,292
Bradford	£3,493,673
Brent	£2,042,535
Brighton and Hove	£1,868,587
Bristol, City of	£3,084,806
Bromley	£1,810,484
Buckinghamshire	£2,541,797
Bury	£1,242,081
Calderdale	£1,400,105
Cambridgeshire	£3,534,503
Camden	£1,955,430
Central Bedfordshire	£1,316,999
Cheshire East	£2,206,178
Cheshire West and Chester	£2,231,395
City of London	£74,202
Cornwall	£4,248,271
County Durham	£4,292,363
Coventry	£2,358,907
Croydon	£2,131,203
Cumberland	£2,073,329
Darlington	£762,199
Derby	£1,746,782
Derbyshire	£5,516,528
Devon	£5,437,789
Doncaster	£2,296,275
Dorset	£2,595,690
Dudley	£2,374,965
Ealing	£2,155,885
East Riding of Yorkshire	£2,199,077
East Sussex	£3,932,344
Enfield	£1,975,008
Essex	£9,002,564
Gateshead	£1,723,537
Gloucestershire	£3,847,684
Greenwich	£2,023,129
Hackney	£2,136,776
Halton	£972,013
Hammersmith and Fulham	£1,396,705
Hampshire	£7,230,797
Haringey	£1,746,224
Harrow	£1,474,947
Hartlepool	£762,125
Havering	£1,529,476
Herefordshire, County of	£1,339,266
Hertfordshire	£6,287,756
Hillingdon	£1,583,351
Hounslow	£1,519,832
Isle of Wight	£1,165,590
Isles of Scilly	£19,259
Islington	£1,955,623
Kensington and Chelsea	£1,318,267
Kent	£9,375,077
Kingston upon Hull, City of	£2,209,684
Kingston upon Thames	£871,710
Kirklees	£2,828,570
Knowsley	£1,485,939
Lambeth	£2,294,810
Lancashire	£8,392,189
Leeds	£5,035,068
Leicester	£2,393,394
Leicestershire	£3,671,668
Lewisham	£2,080,321
Lincolnshire	£5,122,090
Liverpool	£4,497,268
Luton	£1,198,606
Manchester	£4,054,617
Medway	£1,517,596
Merton	£1,137,446
Middlesbrough	£1,152,696
Milton Keynes	£1,381,035
Newcastle upon Tyne	£2,282,513
Newham	£2,233,211
Norfolk	£6,355,073
North East Lincolnshire	£1,185,809
North Lincolnshire	£1,157,231
North Northamptonshire	£1,919,433
North Somerset	£1,405,167
North Tyneside	£1,568,096
North Yorkshire	£3,685,893
Northumberland	£2,313,875
Nottingham	£2,357,334
Nottinghamshire	£5,364,086
Oldham	£1,706,914
Oxfordshire	£3,485,073
Peterborough	£1,207,026
Plymouth	£1,952,909
Portsmouth	£1,354,176
Reading	£866,118
Redbridge	£1,697,214
Redcar and Cleveland	£1,095,342
Richmond upon Thames	£1,005,031
Rochdale	£1,685,628
Rotherham	£2,045,957
Rutland	£206,408
Salford	£2,003,953
Sandwell	£2,810,390
Sefton	£2,319,096
Sheffield	£4,114,255
Shropshire	£2,119,773
Slough	£783,918
Solihull	£1,323,667
Somerset	£3,798,383
South Gloucestershire	£1,422,048
South Tyneside	£1,391,959
Southampton	£1,687,191
Southend-on-Sea	£1,253,167
Southwark	£2,388,693
St Helens	£1,464,343
Staffordshire	£5,386,737
Stockport	£1,951,557
Stockton-on-Tees	£1,285,467
Stoke-on-Trent	£2,025,591
Suffolk	£4,960,045
Sunderland	£2,384,328
Surrey	£6,075,177
Sutton	£1,121,284
Swindon	£1,169,909
Tameside	£1,755,097
Telford and Wrekin	£1,177,567
Thurrock	£994,936
Torbay	£1,260,132
Tower Hamlets	£2,227,967
Trafford	£1,438,259
Wakefield	£2,507,665
Walsall	£2,177,567
Waltham Forest	£1,655,719
Wandsworth	£1,973,214
Warrington	£1,252,767
Warwickshire	£3,398,430
West Berkshire	£761,782
West Northamptonshire	£2,212,835
West Sussex	£5,024,000
Westminster	£2,012,305
Westmorland and Furness	£1,739,737
Wigan	£2,421,506
Wiltshire	£2,772,576
Windsor and Maidenhead	£724,612
Wirral	£2,738,063
Wokingham	£610,750
Wolverhampton	£2,093,393
Worcestershire	£3,626,617
York	£1,112,947
Total	£365,000,000

Note that funding is paid to local authorities with responsibility for adult social care only.

Annex B: grant conditions

In this annex:

• ‘a recipient authority’ means a local authority as listed in annex A to this determination
• ‘the department’ means the Department of Health and Social Care
• ‘fee rate’ means the rate determined and paid by a local authority to providers for care and support services
• ‘grant’ means the amounts set out in annex A for each recipient authority
• ‘Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund’ means the Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund Grant Determination 2023 to 2024: No 31/6646
• ‘minister’ means the Minister of State for Care (unless otherwise specified)

Use of the grant

1) The first condition is that the recipient authority must allocate its full funding allocation from the grant on adult social care, as part of a substantial increase in planned adult social care spending. Recipient authorities must confirm through reporting (see paragraph 4) that they have allocated their full funding allocation from the grant on adult social care (ASC), and that this has been added to their existing ASC budgets.

2) The second condition is that the grant must be used to make improvements in at least one of the 3 target areas set out below. The target areas are the priority areas, as specified by the department, to improve through use of the grant. They are the same target areas as defined in the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund. The department will monitor these areas through specified performance metrics, in line with the initial Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund, to assess levels of improvement.

The target areas are:

• increasing fee rates paid to adult social care providers in local areas
• increasing adult social care workforce capacity and retention
• reducing adult social care waiting times

Further information on each of the target areas is provided in the supporting guidance for the original Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund.

3) The third condition is that recipient authorities must provide a fully completed final report required under the third condition of the MSIF by 11:59pm on 22 May 2024 (see paragraph 3(b) and (c) of the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund grant conditions). This must provide assurance that performance of any areas not chosen as target areas have not worsened.

4) The template for this will be released in due course and recipient authorities must use the template provided by the department.

5) The department will provide information and support in relation to how to complete the reporting requirements, to help recipient authorities meet the grant conditions and achieve the purpose of the funding as set out in paragraph 2 of the grant determination.

6) Where a recipient authority identifies target areas where the performance metrics do not indicate any improvement, officials from the department may engage with the recipient authority to understand what additional support may be required to meet the grant conditions or to explain why the performance metrics indicate no improvement. This may include asking the recipient authority to provide more performance data, repeat exercises or work with a neighbouring recipient authority with a similar market to ascertain the reason for any failure to improve. The Secretary of State may at any time require a further external validation to be carried out by an appropriately qualified independent accountant or auditor on the use of the grant.

7) The contact details for submitting the returns at condition 3 is: msifcorrespondence@dhsc.gov.uk. The department reserves the right to provide for a later date for submission, update the means by which returns are submitted, and may provide alternative methods for submission in future, including a web-based system for greater efficiency.

Payment arrangements

8) The grant funding set out in annex A will be paid in a one-off payment expected in September 2023. The minister reserves the right to alter the timing or amount of grants payments.

9) Funding from the grant must be spent within the 2023 to 2024 financial year. If any funding from the grant is not spent within the designated financial year, the minister may require repayment of the grant monies paid, as may be determined by the minister and notified in writing to the recipient authority.

Financial management

10) A recipient authority must maintain a sound system of internal financial controls.

11) If a recipient authority has any grounds for suspecting financial irregularity in the use of any grant paid under this funding agreement, it must notify the department immediately, explain what steps are being taken to investigate the suspicion and keep the department informed about the progress of the investigation. For these purposes ‘financial irregularity’ includes fraud or other impropriety, mismanagement, and the use of grant for purposes other than those for which it was provided.

Breach of conditions and withholding future funding

12) If  the recipient authority fails to comply with any of these conditions, or if any overpayment is made under this grant, or any amount is paid in error, or any unspent funding is not returned, the minister may reduce, suspend or withhold grant payments or require the repayment of the whole or any part of the grant monies paid, as may be determined by the minister and notified in writing to the authority. Such sum as has been notified will immediately become repayable to the minister who may offset the sum against any future amount due to the recipient authority from central government.

13) The list below contains examples of a breach of the grant conditions:

a) inappropriate use of funding, or no evidence of funding having been spent on the specified purpose set out in paragraph 2 of the grant determination

b) failure to comply with reporting requirements (set out in paragraph 3 of this annex B), including failure to submit documents or submission of incomplete or incorrect documents in the opinion of the minister

c) no improvements in any of the target areas, or worsening of metrics in target areas. In this case, as set out in paragraph 6 above, the department will take steps to provide authorities with the opportunity to explain how they have used the funding and any additional context before considering further measures