Private consultant could be hired to slash costs in Devon adult social care

A private consultancy firm could be brought in to help Devon County Council save more than £100million on its adult social care budget in the next three years.

The council is looking to hire Newton Consulting, a firm that specialises in helping councils improve various departments and in particular health-related ones.

The health and adult care scrutiny committee recommended on Wednesday, October 22 to hire the Oxfordshire-based consultants, with the decision to go ahead now up to the council’s cabinet.

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Adult social care makes up almost half of the county council budget and covers a wide range of functions from ‘social services’ to arranging support for people with disabilities or the elderly to stay in their own homes, mental health support, occupational therapy and much more.

The health scrutiny committee heard yesterday that while the department had saved more than £67m in the past three years, the council needed to go ‘further and faster’ but would need external help to do so.

The committee heard Newton could help save Devon a cumulative £106m over the proposed three-year contract period and that the firm worked on the basis of only being paid if cash savings from its work could be validated by the council.

Newton would locate staff within the council to ascertain where it thought improvements could be made and would ‘upskill staff’, identify ways for services to be commissioned more efficiently and help ensure there were fewer hospital admissions and quicker discharges back to the community.

At this stage there were no details on how the move might affect individual services or the people using them.

Donna Manson, the council’s chief executive, said at the meeting the adult social care department at the council was already the ‘best in the country’ when it came to delivering a compelling service within tightened budgets.

She added the council had worked hard to ensure its adult social care department was “in a position to benefit from this kind of partnership.”

Solveig Wright, the deputy director for adult social care, said the council wanted to work with Newton Consulting because of the ‘sheer scale of what we need to achieve’.

She said: “There is a fair amount of expertise in our team and we have saved £67m since 2022, but now we are at the point where the scale of transformation exceeds what we have the capacity to do in the time available.

“The reason we have looked externally is because of what you get from such an organisation, such as their nationwide expertise, firepower and ability to link us with other areas.”

Councillor Jess Bailey, chair of the scrutiny committee, welcomed the potential collaboration with Newton and the committee voted in favour of endorsing the proposal, a decision that now needs to be taken by the cabinet.

Cllr Bailey also said the scrutiny committee would keep tabs on the progress of the proposed collaboration.

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The move to work with a so-called improvement partner comes amid a host of changes happening with the NHS in Devon.

Not only is it still facing high levels of oversight from the government due to its £94m deficit, the county’s integrated care board is set to be merged with Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which the council said means ‘uncertainty’ in terms of its relationship and ability to collaborate on something like adult social care.

Data shows Devon County Council is a poor relation when it comes to income from the NHS, with the council receiving just £4.8m per 100,000 people in the 2023/24 financial year compared to an England average of nearly £9.3m.