The Department of Health

191. The Department of Health has estimated that in England £11.4m will be required for initial set up costs and additional running costs will amount to £18.5m. Costs to the Welsh Assembly are assumed to be 6% of the DH costs.

192. Training - Training will be needed to ensure all healthcare workers - including doctors, nurses, consultants, consultant psychiatrists - comply with the best practice set out in the Bill. Training for health care staff in England will cost in the region of £8.2m per annum. The cost of training social care workers is estimated at £1.7m. These costs allow for half a day's training and locum cover, where appropriate. For Wales, the training costs are estimated at £0.6m.

193. Guidance - The cost of revising existing guidance for the health and welfare sector in England and Wales will be in the region of £1.5m. However, actual costs may be slightly lower because some guidance will need updating in any event.

194. On-going costs - It is estimated that there will be on-going operational costs of £12m per annum in England to allow health and social care staff to make any necessary adjustments to procedures. This is because the processes involved with decision making will take more time for those professionals not already following the best practice set out in the Bill. On-going costs for Wales are estimated at £0.7m.

195. Independent consultees - Provisions to provide an independent consultee for particularly vulnerable people will cost in the region of £6.5m per annum. The consultee will provide an independent viewpoint, for people who are unbefriended, when important decisions need to be made, such as on medical treatment or a permanent move into care. Costs for Wales are estimated at £0.39m.

Effects on public service manpower

196. Additional health and social care staff will be needed to carry out the procedures in the Bill, ranging from GPs, care assistants, social workers, speech therapists and interpreters. Based on an estimated client population of 1.2 million people who could have recourse to provisions relating to the Bill, we anticipate that extra staff could include:

197. Jobs at the OPG will change under the Bill as staff need to deal with health and welfare matters, as well as financial. More staff may be needed to deal with the extra workload but it is difficult to estimate how many without knowing the scale of the increase of applications to look after the affairs of the mentally incapacitated. On current estimates of workload, we anticipate the PGO's staffing requirements will grow from between 30 and 80 staff. The PGO will be able to firm up likely staff increases once more detailed implementation work has been done to develop the process for dealing with applications for LPAs and understand likely volumes. In addition, new working practices will mean that some existing staff can be transferred to carry out different duties.

198. If the OSPT has to deal with 100 additional cases, as is estimated, this will require at least three additional lawyers and some administrative support.

Summary of regulatory impact assessment

199. The Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) indicates that Mental Capacity legislation will not have a significant impact on the business, charitable and voluntary sectors. The main effect will be on nursing homes and providers of private care. However care home managers believe that most already comply with the best practice set out in the Bill so that the costs arising out of changes to procedure will not be great. The main cost to the voluntary sector will fall to organisations that support and advise people with mental incapacity and their carers. They will want to inform themselves and their members about the bill. However, this is work that these organisations already carry out and additional costs are not expected to be great. The Small Business Service agrees that the Bill will not have a disproportionate impact on small businesses. The RIA can be found in the Library of the House of Commons.