THE 'Frail elderly ticking time bomb' highlights demographic changes of increasing numbers of over 85 year olds pleasingly living longer but sadly with more complex health and care needs.

We have been warning the Coalition government for the last five years that more funding was needed to support this growing number of vulnerable people whilst we continue to deliver our preventative support for many others. The aim is to improve the quality of life of our oldest citizens and keep them in their homes with good support where they would prefer to be for as long as possible.

This government's response to our pleas has been to mercilessly slash council's budgets by 40% with more cuts to follow whilst still introducing new responsibilities for councils to deliver such as the Care Act without sufficient funding.

The stark reality is we have had to prop up Adult Social Care funding by transferring money from other services.This has meant cuts on top of cuts to valued services like highways,street cleaning,parks and leisure to compensate for ideological cuts by government overall.

Integrating health and care services is the way forward but even then this Tory led government refused to allocate any new money and instead forced the cash strapped NHS to transfer their local cash to Bolton council through the Better Care Fund.

Classic robbing Peter to pay Paul which this government has off to an art form. George Osborne should have been a magician.

Greater Manchester Health Devolution represents a major U turn for the Coalition government. Pooling budgets and giving parity to local government with our health colleagues is the opposite of the government's Health Bill reforms and at last there will be public accountability we were previously denied. The NHS will remain free at the point of need and national standards will be preserved.

However we need to ensure we are not short changed again by the cunning unfair Chancellor.

Cllr Linda Thomas

Deputy Leader Bolton Council