A Record of Action….A Promise of More!

• Cornwall Council provides services to 33,000 vulnerable adults.
• We provide care at home for all patients with substantial needs, whereas some other Councils have cut this vital service to the legal minimum (only those who are in critical need).
• Creating a single Council for Cornwall is saving over £70 million over the next four years in reduced bureaucracy – allowing an extra £7 million for adult social care this year alone despite a freeze in Government funding. Since 2005 we’ve raised adult care spending by £32 million (40%), and it will rise another £6 million to £116.524 million by 2011. By cutting bureaucracy and waste we have also still kept the Council Tax below the national average - and we promise to keep it there.
• Longer term, Liberal Democrats are campaigning for a seamless single health and social care service for Cornwall, cutting even more bureaucratic waste and ensuring joined-up care through the home to hospital and back again, essential for protecting vulnerable pensioners.

The Lib Dem Guarantee

• We guarantee to maintain support at home to all those with substantial needs, unlike Conservative and Labour led councils elsewhere - and still keep Cornwall’s Council tax below average, cutting it in real terms over the next four years.

• We will increase the share of County funding going to adult social services to improve support for elderly and disabled people in Cornwall, without increasing Council Tax, using the savings from creating the single Cornwall Council

• We will maintain free swimming for the over 60s.

• We will campaign for rapid Government changes to bring Cornwall’s share of national funding for vulnerable adults up to at least the national average, and to fully reflect the high proportion of people over 60 in Cornwall.

• We will campaign nationally to pressure Government to abolish the unfair Council Tax which hits pensioners especially hard, and replace it with a fair system based on ability to pay.

Compare the difference!

• The Conservatives in Government cut the pension link with earnings – meaning a single pension today is just £90.70 a week. If the link had been maintained, today the single pension would have been worth over £50 more each week.
• Under both Labour and Conservative Governments, the formula for funding Cornwall’s support for vulnerable adults has been held far below the national average – a shortfall of 20% per person or £28 million for the whole of Cornwall last year alone, placing Cornwall in the bottom 7% nationally of Government funding for Adult Social Care.
• Locally, under Conservative and Independent control in the past Cornwall saw one of the lowest rates of support for vulnerable older people anywhere in the UK.
• Government policies under both Conservative and Labour mean pensioners have been hit by more and more complex and humiliating means tests, and average Council Tax nationally rocketing to £1175 (compared to an average Council Tax bill of £1000 in Lib Dem led Cornwall).