Let us assume that the home will not want to take less than it has been used to, when the person’s means go under the threshold for state assistance. Whether the excess counts as a top-up depends on what the home has agreed in advance, by way of specification or description, to be the accommodation provided to the authority, in return for the lower local authority fee. If it is just ‘accommodation and care’ for particular client groups, then the authority can require the reduced fee to apply for the same room, we think. But if it was a more narrow description of rooms of a certain quality, the home will be able to insist that the previously occupied, so-called better quality room comes at a premium regardless of whether it is the local authority or a private individual who is paying. Thus the difference would then have to be paid for by way of a top-up from a third party, if the client wanted the right to remain in that particular room.
