NEW care rules have piled “extreme pressure” on budgets to protect Hampshire’s most vulnerable people, a meeting heard.

Safeguarding costs have soared by £1m at Hampshire County Council since it was forced to process thousands of applications to keep the elderly in care.

Council leader Roy Perry said the “extremely cumbersome and expensive process” is damaging service quality.

A Supreme Court ruling means rest homes and hospitals have to apply to the council to legally keep residents with dementia or learning disabilities.

Applications in Hampshire have soared from 396 in 2013/14 to more than 10,000 since April 2014, hugely increasing workload for the assessors authorising them. It has led to “extreme pressure” on finances, according to a council report which said this year’s £500,000 boost from the government will not be repeated in 2016/17.

Cllr Perry told cabinet: “I really hope that the national lawmakers will investigate some way we can protect the rights of individuals and make sure they’re not abused, but at the same time not have a very cumbersome and expensive process that stops us being able to give elderly people the care that we would very much like to give them.”

Previously the rules, under Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), were mostly used by people wanting to leave care, giving them a legal route to challenge their detention. If authorities had applications granted they could make decisions on the behalf of those lacking mental capacity.

But the court ruling, issued in 2014, widened the scope of the law and could become even tougher if it is interpreted to apply to people being cared for in their own home.

Community care solicitor David Edwards, of Simpson Millar LLP, said: “Everyone agrees that the DoLS system isn’t working and in the longer term, five to 10 years, it will be replaced.

“There are lots of people who are perfectly content in their care home, have no desire to leave and are never going to leave who are nonetheless now deprived of their liberty, and now local authorities have to authorise that.”