Hackney Council has quietly binned its £250-a-week cap on home care charges, insisting it’s just “bringing us in line” with the neighbours. Which neighbours, exactly? Tower Hamlets, name-checked as proof by Labour’s then cabinet member, charges nothing at all for home care. The council says only 139 better-off self-funders will notice. One of them expects his monthly bill to go from £1,000 to about £3,000. Two-thirds of those who answered the consultation opposed the change. And the equality assessment meant to show how their views shaped the decision? The only published version has that box left blank. Labour dreamt up scrapping the cap and waved it through; the new Green administration let it take effect. Meanwhile, the government’s own figures put more than half the borough’s over-60s in income-deprived households, second only to… Tower Hamlets.
Hackney's care cap: the small print
Read more from the bird that pecks at the crumbs of news in the borough
