A60Delivery risk: RedGate: pending
A costed social-care capacity plan
Existing action A60, assessed at the same scope.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Adult social care in England: about 1.6 million filled posts, the people who draw on care, and councils that commission it. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: England.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 10.0–19.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Baseline: a £500m first-year envelope agreed for the Fair Pay Agreement, with negotiations from about April 2027 and the first agreement in April 2028; an adult social care workforce plan promised by the end of 2026 (30 September 2026); the Casey Commission reports by summer 2027; the Prime Minister has proposed a National Care Service for the next Parliament. Making the workforce plan a costed capacity plan tied to the pay agreed is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Social care
- In the national plan: Wellbeing list
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
A capacity plan becomes an intervention only when it specifies extra care hours, workforce and the services they replace or complement.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Define a local care cohort, unmet need and provider capacity; compare pay, retention, commissioning and service-model options against funded provision.
- Test whether it works
- Needs met, continuity, quality of life and carer burden alongside safe discharge. A discharge count alone misses community need.
- Establish the cost
- Recurring wages, training, travel, provider viability, capital and commissioning; test demand growth and realistic workforce supply.
- Protect against harm
- Separate care and NHS budgets, avoid unsafe discharge and measure impacts on unpaid carers.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of A costed social-care capacity plan: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Model unmet need; specify pay, recruitment, training and commissioning; support unpaid carers; agree recurring funding. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)0 of 3 — No effect evaluation
Reviewer’s reason: Need is established; no specified, evaluated expansion package. A funding-protection reform is not a capacity intervention.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Reviewer’s reason: Major workforce constraint; service displacement; eligibility and quality trade-offs.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Full workforce/pay bill, provider viability, capital, commissioning, transition and long-term liabilities.
Delivery capacity (Ca)0 of 3 — Unavailable within scope
Reviewer’s reason: Model unmet need; specify pay, recruitment, training and commissioning; support unpaid carers; agree recurring funding.
Distribution (Fa)3 of 3 — Benefits concentrated on disadvantaged people with assessed burdens
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)1 of 3 — More than three but less than ten years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Care actually delivered, unmet need, continuity and carer outcomes.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: DHSC, Treasury, councils and care providers; devolved systems separately; Define and commission capacity plan
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 10.0–19.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 9.1–17.3 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 11.8–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 11.1–17.8 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: RedReview’s claim: Red. Best the recorded evidence allows: Red.
Review’s reason: Major workforce constraint; service displacement; eligibility and quality trade-offs.
Why it is not Green yet
- Delivery obstacle: Major workforce constraint; service displacement; eligibility and quality trade-offs..
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Full workforce/pay bill, provider viability, capital, commissioning, transition and long-term liabilities.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: DHSC, Treasury, councils and care providers; devolved systems separately (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Department of Health and Social Care with HM Treasury, councils and the Fair Pay Agreement negotiating body (action record)
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Social care is devolved; Scotland and Wales have their own negotiating-body powers under the Employment Rights Act 2025. Not assessed.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Risks and residual harms: Major workforce constraint; service displacement; eligibility and quality trade-offs.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Care actually delivered, unmet need, continuity and carer outcomes.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Vacancy rate in adult social care: latest 7.0% (111,000 posts) (2024–25); baseline not published (England).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Care actually delivered, unmet need, continuity and carer outcomes.
Need is established; no specified, evaluated expansion package. A funding-protection reform is not a capacity intervention.
SWOT points it addresses
- About 111,000 care posts were vacant (7.0%) and 23.1% of staff left their job in a year. (Social care)
- The first Fair Pay Agreement is due in April 2028; £500m is the maximum agreed for councils in its first year and the recurring cost depends on the pay agreed, so council budgets for extra capacity could be squeezed. (Social care)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Model unmet need; specify pay, recruitment, training and commissioning; support unpaid carers; agree recurring funding. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Define and commission capacity plan
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.