Suffolk County Council has been given an extra £2m to spend on adult social care as part of a national £200m hand-out to local authorities.

The money will be added to the council’s overall adult and community services budget of £232m for next year and should help to ease the effects of a £12m cut in the department’s overall budget.

It should help the council to negotiate more care packages for some of the most vulnerable adults across Suffolk.

The council has also been given an extra £400,000 for rural services in Suffolk. There is no requirement on which department should use this – although it should go to services in rural parts of the county.

The funding boosts were announced by the government because it had a slight surplus above what was planned in the budget in November – but the overall figures are a small proportion of Suffolk County Council’s total budget of nearly £500m.