This Council notes:
1. Social Care is one of the biggest issues of our time and the system is unsustainable – for patients, their families, communities and councils.
2. The Prime Minister has committed to fixing the broken social care system by finding common ground across party lines, setting out a new approach to politics based on problem-solving rather than point-scoring, and drawing a line under decades of governments leaving this issue unaddressed.
3. Baroness Louise Casey, who chairs the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, has launched the Big Conversation on Care, a new online platform giving the public the chance to share their views and help shape the future of adult social care in England, starting with what values and principles a care system should be built on.
4. The scale of the challenge is significant: there are an estimated 1.46 million adult social care workers and 4.7 million unpaid carers in England; in June 2026 an average of 13,600 people a day were medically fit to leave hospital but unable to do so, partly due to the availability of social care; and around 3,000 instances of corridor care are occurring daily as a result of pressures on hospital capacity.
5. The number of A&E attendances by people aged 65 and over has risen from 3.3 million in 2011/12 to 5.8 million in 2024/25, growth far outstripping the increase in the older population, and cuts to social care funding between 2010 and 2018 are estimated to have driven around half a million additional A&E attendances a year among people aged 65 and over.
6. In Coventry, we have recently been awarded ‘good’ from the CQC inspection, but our aim is to consistently improve. We recognise the issues and barriers inherent in the service nationally, and we are already seeking to resolve them by using innovatory measures with partners, but we welcome the opportunity for further and wider engagement.
This Council welcomes:
7. The pace and drive shown by the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care in working to bring forward its reporting timetable by a year, recognising the urgency felt by residents, carers, care workers, Unions and Local Government who cannot afford to wait for lasting reform.
8. The Prime Minister's willingness to reach across party lines, and the engagement of the opposition parties with this process, in the belief that a problem of this scale and longevity can only be solved through a settlement built to outlast any single Parliament.
This Council resolves to:
9. Promote the Big Conversation on Care to residents, staff, carers, providers, Unions and local partners, and encourage the fullest possible local participation in it.
10.Offer this Council's full support and participation in the national conversation in whatever way is most useful to the Commission and the Government — whether that is through local engagement events, sharing local data and case studies, or any other means the Commission considers helpful.
11.Continue to work constructively with all political groups represented on this Council, and with neighbouring authorities, health partners and Unions in the same spirit of problem-solving over point-scoring set out by the Prime Minister — recognising that social care reform will only endure if it is built on cross-party consensus, not the priorities of one administration.
12.Ask the Leader/Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care to report back to full Council on the outcomes of local engagement with the Big Conversation on Care, and on the Commission's findings as they are published.