A service to help elderly and vulnerable residents continue living in their own homes is set for an overhaul designed to make it more effective – and better value for money.

Lancashire County Council’s home adaptations scheme provides minor modifications – costing under £1,000 – to properties in order to ensure more people can retain their independence for longer, reducing the demand for care services.

The authority has now struck an agreement with nine of the area’s local district councils, which will see them deliver the service directly, using funding transferred from County Hall.

A cabinet meeting at which the change was approved heard that it would create a more flexible and efficient service, which could also reduce delays in getting people back home after a stay in hospital or a care setting.

The move comes with an increase in the overall budget available for the supportive measures – such as installing hand rails and hoists – which are intended to aid daily living or assist with nursing care being provided in the home.

The Reform UK-run county council has allocated £2.17m to the revamped programme for the 13 months to the end of December 2026.

Just three years ago, the authority was spending £800,000 annually on home adaptations, a service which it is obliged to offer under care legislation.

Three districts have declined to take part, but the county council has not identified them. The authority will retain £450,000 of the overall budget to continue providing the service itself in those areas.

Under the new arrangements, the other nine district councils will either commission local companies to carry out the work or undertake it themselves.

A cabinet report stated that the approach would “leverage local expertise, infrastructure and relationships”.

Cabinet member for adult social care Graham Dalton said that “price inconsistencies across the districts” made the current county-level system “quite inefficient”.

He added the new set-up would allow for “flexibility. while maintaining accountability and continuity”.

Under the formal agreement reached with the districts, the county council will set out “clear outcomes and evidence requirements” to ensure that the statutory duties it has delegated to the local authorities are fulfilled, the report noted.

Deputy Progressive Lancashire opposition group leader Gina Dowding said it was a “fantastic” move which rightly “acknowledged that providing services locally can be more effective and more efficient and [lead to] better outcomes for local people”.

County council leader Stephen Atkinson told the meeting that the new delivery model embodied the division of responsibilities between authorities in so-called ‘two-tier’ areas like Lancashire that was envisaged at the time of the last local government revamp in 1974.

“The districts would deliver those local services and the county would deliver the strategic services,” County Cllr Atkinson said. “And when we get back to that, we’re at our best.”

The days of the two-tier system in Lancashire – which County Cllr Atkinson has long championed – appear to be numbered under a government-ordered shake-up that will see the creation of a handful of standalone councils that deliver all services in their respective areas by 2028 and see the current 15 main local authorities in the county axed.