Next year, Waltham Forest will pay £201,801 for emergency social care support – up from £180,998 – an increase of around 11.6%, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter

Waltham Forest Council is set to pay tens of thousands more for NHS teams handling emergency social care.

The North East London Adult Emergency Duty team (EDT) provides help to vulnerable adults in urgent need of care, or who require protection from harm, that cannot wait until the following day.

It covers patients in Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge and Waltham Forest, under the umbrella of the North East London Foundation NHS Trust.

The service operates between 5.15pm and 8.45am on Mondays through Fridays, and for 24 hours on weekends and public holidays.

Next year, each authority – including Waltham Forest – will pay £201,801, up from £180,998 – an increase of almost £21,000, or 11.6%.

They will need to put the money forward in advance, in one lump sum.

The fees will then climb at a steady rate of around £11,000 per year, hitting £245,290 by 2029.

The combined total paid by all four will reach £981,163 by the end of the decade, up from this year’s total just shy of £724,000.

Councillor Mark Santos, Redbridge Council’s cabinet member for adult social care, said: “It is a statutory requirement and absolutely right to have an out-of-hours emergency service.”

He added that there will be no significant difference between the old model and the new scheme.

Though the four borough councils will pay the same amount despite differing populations, this is not thought to be an “atypical” arrangement, the cabinet member said.

The price hike is meant to reflect the actual cost of running the service, according to a Redbridge report, with annual increases capped at 5%.

In 2022/23, the four authorities were paying around £694,100.

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.