Recent council documents reveal that several targets set to improve SEND and adult social care within the borough were not met in Quarter Three.
While the council does have until the end of Quarter Four (31st March 2026) to complete these targets, the delay indicates a current failing to improve SEND and adult social care to the council’s desired level within the original timeframe set.
According to Rochdale Borough Council’s ‘Adult Social Care and Health Directorate Plan 2025-26’, initial plans for the year included radical overhauls in the way adult social care was delivered, in order to fulfil the council’s plan: ‘To make our borough a great place to grow up, get on and live well’.
A major aspect of the plan involved the transformation programme ‘Empowering People, Changing Lives’ (also known as EPiC Lives), a multi-year programme redesigning adult social care services to be more effective, preventative, and person-centred.
This includes the ‘Home First’ care system – a practice where after a hospital visit, patients are helped to return home as quickly as possible- as well as the ‘Tech-Enabled Care (TEC) expansion’, which focuses on using digital systems to speed up health support.
Unfortunately, the completion of this particular programme is one of the targets that was not fully met, as outlined in the council’s Quarter Three Performance Update on the ‘Adult, Children & Public Health & Communities Directorate Plans 2025-26’.
As per 28th January 2026, EPiC Lives was only 82% complete- almost 20% adrift from its original target.
Another adult social care target with a missed deadline was: ‘Deliver best practice Quality Assurance and Safeguarding across Health and Social care’.
As per 28th January 2026, this programme was 87% complete- 13% away from its target.
Both of these items are marked ‘Amber’ on the Quarter Three Performance Update, with the council suggesting that the reasons for these missed deadlines were ‘due to circumstances outside of the directorate’s control’.
No specifics of these circumstances were provided within the discussed document or by Rochdale Borough Council.
As seen in the graph below, the two missed targets mentioned above account for 20% of overall adult social care transformations being delayed.
Purple items are actions which are not yet due for completion but are currently on track, and green items are actions completed by the target date.
The Quarter Three Performance Update also revealed how Rochdale Borough Council have fallen behind schedule on meeting targets to improve SEND in the borough.
As per the council’s Children’s Services Directorate Plan 2025-6, plans to reform Children’s Services included an action ‘To ensure statutory SEND support is timely and of high quality delivered by a resilient workforce’.
It is this action which has been marked as ‘Amber’ in the recent Quarter Three Performance Update- reaching only 79% completion by its intended deadline.
Reasons for the delay were provided in the Quarter Three Performance Update, with the council citing ‘management sickness and capacity pressures’ as the two main justifications.
Local residents say they feel a significant amount of frustration with Rochdale Borough Council’s inability to improve healthcare in a timely manner and to a high standard.
Life-long Rochdale resident Samuel Rhodes, 23, said: “Nurses and doctors in Rochdale have recently told members of my family to complain about the system, so while the people who work in the healthcare system are good, the system as a whole isn’t fit for purpose”.
“I think if you asked most people in Rochdale what the council do, most people wouldn’t know”.
“We always seem to be getting squeezed more to pay more and we never see the effects of it on the ground- it feels like progress is stagnated here”, he continued.
Rochdale Borough Council did not initially respond to request for comment.
Following publication of this article, a spokesperson for Rochdale Borough Council requested to add: “Across council departments we have robust systems in place for monitoring performance and service delivery, as set out on in these quarter 3 reports, and we are on track to meet our targets for the services we deliver for residents.”