Definitely not. It is an indication, but no more, that the move may have been intended to be temporary, and must be weighed in the balance with all the information available to the authority.
Take this example: a resident of authority A goes to visit her relatives in Authority B, leaving her jointly or singly owned house occupied by her brother, with whom she has shared her house for 3 years. They have had a big row.
She takes her dog with her, 3 suitcases full of clothes, and her photographs going back 50 years. She rings up in advance and says she can stand no more. The relatives have got planning permission for building what could be termed a ‘granny annex’ on the side of their property, but until it is built, the elderly lady is going to have the spare bedroom. After a month there she suffers a stroke, and is cared for in hospital for 2 further weeks. The relatives are not able to take proper care of her because they work full time. The stroke has not affected her mental capacity and she consents to her relatives paying for her to be moved in to a residential care home local to them. She has no income other than a state pension. Her brother is over 60 years old.
Those last two facts mean that whichever authority is liable to pay, one of them will be obliged to when the relatives decide to stop paying – she does not have care and attention otherwise available by reference to her income, and the capital value of her house ought not to be taken into consideration because of her elderly brother’s need for a home.
But the fact that the client has a house in the area of authority A cannot determine the question of ordinary residence. Even if she had lived for only one week in the area of Authority B, our view on these facts would be that she intended to settle permanently in the area of her relatives. Not even the knowledge that Authority A and B have signed up to an inner London authorities’ protocol which transfers liability to the second authority after a set period of residence would convince us that she was still ordinarily resident within Authority A. You don’t take your photographs on a short visit. Also, she has willingly agreed to be placed in a home locally prior to the involvement of the LA. When she asks the local authority for help, they may well say she has a house elsewhere, as if that answered the question of intention, but the wider facts explain why the mere existence of the house doesn’t resolve the question in this particular case. There is no minimum period of residence required in order to prove the voluntary changing of ordinary residence.
Neither is there a maximum – it all depends on the facts. It is not open to local authorities to come to their own convenient benchmark for how long is required – the question is a matter of law, not administrative discretion. Clients may well have an interest in establishing ordinary residence in B rather than A – the criteria for services may be easier to meet, or the charging policy more generous. In this case it is virtually certain that authority B is liable.
