Health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has revealed that the extra £2bn funding for adult care shared between councils and the NHS announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review was deliberately front-loaded to offset front-loaded cuts in council grant funding.

He told last week's national children's and adult services conference that £800m of the extra annual £1bn allocated to the NHS for care would be released for 2011/2012, adding: ‘The potential impact of painful reductions in council spending was a real concern to us, and we feared there would be a big rise in hospital admissions.' He later added: ‘Council grant cuts are front-loaded from next year which is why we front-loaded the extra social care funding.'