Cutting bureaucracy is key to improving care services for an ageing Bexley population, councillors have been told.

Plans for a major revamp in how care is provided in Bexley were given the go-ahead after councillors were told the current system was leading to delays and complaints.

Adult social care is a sector that is under pressure nationally as demand grows due to elderly people living longer than ever before.

In Bexley, Stuart Rowbotham, director for adult social care, said the council should be using third parties more for basic duties and assessments to cut out long-winded bureaucratic processes.

In some cases, if there is a change of circumstances, patients must be referred to the council from their care provider for an assessment, before a panel makes a final decision.

The process often leads to delays and complaints, councillors were told.

Mr Rowbotham said: “When up against tight financial circumstance it is incumbent of us to take a cool hard look at the way we are working. We spend about £7.5m on our social care workforce. At least five per cent of activity being undertaken can be described as routine and non-complex case management and review work.

“It is clear we have over-engineered our model and that is causing delays and complaints. The report presented tonight seeks permission to develop a new model. The proposition is simple, we recognise we work with trusted partnered organisations.

“Those organisations are trusted by our residents. We want to empower those partners to make timely social care decisions on our behalf. If we did that, at a stroke we would remove bureaucratic transactional costs.”

Under the new proposals, voluntary and third-sector organisations would be used for routine and low-level assessment work and case management, cutting out the need for patients to be signed over to the council and reducing the amount of cash spent on extra agency staff.

Mr Rowbotham said similar models have resulted in faster service, lower costs and better services – however, nowhere else in the country has proposed doing it on the scale Bexley Council has proposed.

Savings would come from removing unnecessary tasks “locked into the current system”, leading to a more “streamlined and personalised service”, according to cabinet member Brad Smith.

Cllr Smith said: “An increasingly ageing population is a good thing but the way we deliver social care has to change.

“A transformation of this scale has not been done anywhere nationally, so we would be leading the way.”