Community Care
Local Authority must ensure care budget will meet needs
The High Court has quashed the decision of Lancashire County Council (LCC) in respect of a budget provided to an autistic young man because they failed to ensure that the allocated budget would be sufficient to meet his needs and provide the care required in the community. In the making of this order, the local authority’s process was criticised, as was their conduct of the case in failing to reconsider their decision.
Under the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, the local authority is required to assess an individual’s needs and meet them. In this case, our client was a young man who is diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder, and he requires 24 hour background support from a provider who understands his communication, thinking and social understanding to enable to him to remain safe and to avoid a deterioration in his health.
Presently, local authorities assess those needs and then provide the individual with a personal budget to pay for the care required. In arriving at the budget, many local authorities, including LCC, rely upon a standard self-rating questionnaire to allocate a number of points which is then translated into an indicative budget. LCC guidance sets out that this budget is intended to be a starting point for allocating a budget, but our client’s experience was that the budget became a set figure, to which he needed to tailor the care plan.
It is clear from previously decided cases that the duty on the local authority is to ensure that the budget meets the assessed needs but, in this case, our client found that it was the care that had to meet the budget. HHJ Pelling QC sitting as a Judge in the Administrative Court, a branch of the High Court, determined that this was unlawful as he was satisfied, on the evidence in this case, that there had been no attempt, once the budget was set, to check how the client’s complex needs could be met. He agreed with our submissions that the local authority had failed to turn its mind to whether the client’s assessed needs could be met within the allocated budget.
Accordingly, the local authority now has 35 days to put this right by reconsidering the client’s needs, what is required to meet these needs and then provide a budget to pay for this.
The Judge in his decision was complimentary of our representations to the local authority both before and during the Court proceedings and was critical of the council’s failure to accept the proposals we put forward which would have seen an end to the matter without the need for the matter to reach the court.
This decision may impact all Lancashire County Council residents who receive a personal budget, and we would recommend that anyone who is dissatisfied with the amount allocated to them should ask for it to be reconsidered. Anyone who thinks they may be affected by this is welcome to contact us for further advice.