East Sussex County Council To Seek New Drugs And Alcohol Contract

East Sussex County Council plans to cut spending on drugs and alcohol services as it looks to secure a new contract.

On Tuesday (January 21), Cllr Carl Maynard, the authority’s lead member for adult social care, agreed to begin the process of recommissioning the county’s drugs and alcohol treatment service.

The authority currently commissions the service from Change, Grow, Live (CGL), but its contract is due to expire in March 2026.

The proposed value of the new contract is £4.8 million, around £300,000 lower than the current contract value of £5.1 million.

During the meeting, Darrell Gale, East Sussex County Council’s director of public health, said:

“We have already invoked the included extensions to [the current] contract, so we have to go out now to tender for these services.

“As with any procurement, going to market is a way of seeking better outcomes, better quality and better value for the council taxpayer where we can.

"This time round we have had to make a small reduction — of less than six per cent — in the financial envelope of these services.

“This has to be borne against the national reductions in drug and alcohol services. Between and 2014/15 and 2021/22, overall in England, local authorities reduced [by] 40 per cent their commissioning of drug and alcohol treatment services; in East Sussex we kept them the same.

“This is the first time we have made a reduction in the overall envelope for drug and alcohol treatment services and as I say it is less than six per cent.”

Mr Gale went on to say the new contract would also see changes implemented as a result of learning from initiatives such as Project Adder — a scheme which offered counselling services to people recovering from crack or opiate use.

These changes would include the provision of anti-overdose medication as part of the contract, he said.

According to the council, the reduction in the contract’s value is partly due to cuts being made in its adult social care budget, but also comes as a result of moving non-clinical treatment for 18 to 25-year-olds to a specialist service.

The council says the Public Health Grant investment into drug and alcohol treatment services will be protected, however.

Reduced funding was previously raised as part of budget-setting proposals discussed by cabinet members in September and November last year.

Papers from these meetings, which put the savings between £318,000 to £319,000 over two years, tied the cuts to recovery services — in other words services which aid people to maintain their sobriety and make positive changes to their lives.

In a report from the September cabinet meeting, a council spokesman said the cut “would mean there would no longer be any directly commissioned recovery services in the county.”

According to the council, this potential change comes as a result of proposals to end the core funded annual grants programme, which currently funds the recovery services.

However, the council also says East Sussex is expected to receive additional monies through the Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Recovery Improvement Grants (DATRIG) alongside this change, although this is subject to agreement from the treasury at a later date.

The November cabinet papers also made reference to further savings of £507,000 over two years — beginning in the current financial year — which will be made by reducing funding for “treatment services”.

The November cabinet papers warned that this change to what treatments are available “is likely to increase the number of people with drug and alcohol dependency, and therefore [result in] a potential increase in the number of associated hospital admissions and deaths, as well as a potential increase in the broader social and societal costs of drug and alcohol misuse.”

According to the report to Cllr Maynard, East Sussex has seen alcohol related hospital admissions rise steadily since 2009/10.

The report says the county saw 77 drug and alcohol related deaths (DARDs) in 2022. This figure is made up of 55 deaths attributed to alcohol-specific mortality and 22 deaths attributed to drug poisoning.

It goes on to say 67 confirmed DARDs occurred within the county in 2023, but this figure could increase as inquests remain open on 20 further potential DARDs.

In both years, the report says, most of the deceased had multiple drugs and/or alcohol recorded in their toxicology reports. Of those who died, 29 or 42 per cent were not active in structured treatment services, it adds.