Tory plans for a cut-price English “revolution” in community care for the elderly face failure due to fantasy-land savings targets, government auditors warned yesterday.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt took a beating over the Better Care Fund brainwave which sees £2 billion “top-sliced” from annual NHS budgets and handed to local authorities.

The scheme — announced with great fanfare in 2013 — was supposed to save £1bn a year as council-led services eased pressure on creaking accident and emergency departments.

Yet the National Audit Office said that funding cuts, poor management and rising demand at hospitals threaten to kill the project.

Even a reduced savings target following a government review was a “bold assumption” based on “on optimism rather than evidence,” the NAO said in its report published today.

Health Emergency director Dr John Lister backed its findings and warned: “They’re making it up.

“They’re expecting a diminishing real-terms amount of money to produce miracles.”

To make community care a success “you have to be prepared to invest,” he said.

Instead billions have been sucked from front-line NHS services to pay for the fund, which is topped up from shrinking council care budgets.

The project has already faced big delays after ministers’ £1bn savings claim was shredded in April by NHS England, which could only identify £55 million of that total.

However, the latest estimates are still based on a 3.1 per cent cost reduction in A&Es — a figure questioned by the NAO.

Labour shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the NAO report was a “serious reprimand” and “an indictment” of Mr Hunt’s record.

“He has been found out making wildly exaggerated claims for his policies and, once again, putting spin before substance,” said Mr Burnham, who has pushed for a National Care Service.

“The revelation that the government miscalculated the savings by £945m will severely dent public confidence in this policy.”