After much talk, it was announced earlier today that the much-anticipated care reforms due to take effect in October 2023 have been delayed by 2 years. While it is disappointing that the full benefits of these reforms will not be realised next year – there is an upside. The postponement provides additional time to implement the practice changes required by the reforms.

As expected, today’s Budget announcement reiterated the commitment to a shake-up of social care funding in England. There are still unanswered questions about the level of additional funding required to implement the proposals. Here we explore the areas which local authorities may need to consider when estimating these costs.

Dominating the news over the past few days has been the announcement of the long-anticipated reforms to health and social care in England. Naturally, the question of funding has remained central to the debate. Measures have been proposed to raise £36bn over the next 3 years through the introduction of a 1.25% health and social levy, along with an increase in dividend tax. Initially however, this levy will be used to fund the NHS, and then eventually be diverted to social care. OCC’s work is intrinsically linked to that of local authorities in the social care sector. We are watching closely to determine the potential impact of the reforms on social care funding on our products. In this insights article, we explore whether any substantial changes have been introduced since Dilnot’s first reform proposals in 2011 and take a look at the potential challenges.

At OCC we have been building and hosting software that deals with sensitive public sector data for over a decade. But where do you start if you are embarking on a project/business that has sensitive data at its heart? ISO 27001 The basic standard you need to look at for a company in this sector is ISO 27001:2013. You can purchase a copy of this standard online. If you go along this path the one thing I will say is[...]