CARE FEES - Recent Successful Appeal

Recent Successful Financial Assessment appeal for a client of Robert Howard in respect of over £40,000 of care fees.

When a local authority carries out a financial assessment of a person who may enter residential care, the local authority is duty bound to consider the guidelines set out in the Care Act 2014.

There is a Mandatory Disregard when a local authority MUST ignore the value of the family home and is prohibited from either forcing the property to be sold or taking any part of its value into account to pay for care fees. The most well known example of the Mandatory Disregard is when the person who requires to enter residential care leaves their spouse or partner residing in the family home. The value of the property MUST be disregarded.

Less well known is that under the guidelines of the Care Act 2014 the local authority may apply a DISCRETIONARY Disregard in respect of the value of the house belonging to a person entering residential care.

I have been involved in advising a client when the discretionary disregard was not considered by the local authority at the time the original financial assessment took place.

In this case “Penny” (not her real name) sadly came down with early stage dementia. She asked her close friend “Jayne” to live with her and look after her so that she could enjoy living in her own home for as long as possible. Approximately four years after Jayne moved in, Penny’s dementia deteriorated to such an extent that she had to go into residential care. Three years later Penny died and the local authority sought to claim a substantial amount of care fees from Jayne, who still resided in the property.

At this stage Jayne contacted me and I appealed the decision on her behalf using the local authority’s internal appeal system.

I am pleased to state that the representations were successful and the local authority accepted that the Discretionary Disregard should be applied in this particular case.

This meant that Jayne did not have to sell her home to pay for Penny’s care fees.

As I have stated in an earlier post, any person involved in a financial assessment needs professional legal advice as the law is a minefield !

Free, friendly legal advice is just a phone call away!

CALL ME at my Normanton Office between 10am and 4 pm 0n (01924) 276780

AND outside these hours on (07803) 276780

OR simply message me on this website

I shall be happy to assist in this complex area of law.

Robert Howard

Solicitor

Updated September 2024