THE amount spent on care for elderly people living in their homes in East Lothian is the second lowest in the country, according to the latest national survey.

East Lothian Council spends £15.41 an hour on care at home for its older residents, compared to a Scottish national average of £21.58 an hour.

It puts the local authority second bottom in a comparison of the average amounts spent by the 32 local authorities across the country, with only Falkirk spending less at £14.74.

And it puts East Lothian bottom of the pile when compared to other local authorities who have a similar demographic and challenges.

Neighbouring Midlothian spends £25.90 an hour, while the Scottish Borders spends £19.89.

The figures were released as part of a benchmarking report published by the Local Government Benchmarking Framework.

It revealed that, in 2011/12, the local authority was spending £15.79 an hour on care at home, but that figure dropped dramatically the following year to £10.05 – half the national average at that time – and although it has since increased year on year, it has still to return to the amounts spent four years ago.

East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership, which oversees adult social care services on behalf of East Lothian Council, said that the figures did not reflect the hourly rate paid to carers but were, instead, based on taking the gross expenditures on care at home and dividing it by the number of hours provided annually, insisting figures varied across councils and other factors were involved.

The low spend by East Lothian Council on care at home is in contrast to the amount it spends each week on residential care for older people in the county. When it comes to care in residential homes, the local authority spends an average of £422 compared to a national average of £369 – placing it ninth in the table of councils.

The latest figures are based on 2015/2016 comparisons carried out by the Local Government Benchmarking Framework.

They come a month after the Courier revealed dozens of people in the county with complex needs faced losing specialist carers because independent charities providing care could no longer do so at the rates provided. The Action Group, which has administration offices in Haddington and provides specialist carers to 31 people with a range of complex needs, told its families it was no longer able to provide the service because the council’s rates were too low.

It was claimed that the council had capped its hourly rate for at home carers at £15.95.

Professional body the UK Homecare Association, which represents voluntary and not-for-profit care sectors, said the full hourly rate which should have been offered during 2015/16 was £19.03.

Both the Action Group and fellow third-sector carer firm Carr Gomm are understood to have pulled out of the tendering process for contracts to provide services in the coming years because of the low hourly rates on offer in East Lothian.

Councillor Stuart Currie, leader of the SNP opposition group at East Lothian Council, has raised concerns about delayed discharges from hospital caused by a lack of care at home packages and residential places for county residents at recent meetings of the East Lothian Integration Joint Board.

He said: “When I chatted to parents and carers affected by the current tendering issues that is seeing providers like the Action Group unable to continue, they told me that other authorities were paying more for services which meant that they were able to recruit and retain much better than East Lothian.

“I don’t think it is an accident that Midlothian has much lower delayed discharges from hospital and it would seem obvious it is because they are spending more money to ensure people who are medically assessed to be at home can be.

“In the short term that may mean higher costs, but when you look at the broader picture, delayed discharge has a huge financial cost, not to mention the emotional impact on patients and families affected by it.”

But David Small, director of the East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “Benchmarking information is extremely useful but we do have to be clear that it is not always comparing like with like. Our contracts with providers enable them to pay wages that meet the national requirements, as is the case across health and social care partnerships in Scotland.”