Date of decision: 28 July 2025
Summary
The complaint concerned Rutland County Council’s refusal to pay social care costs for an individual seeking to move to Extra Care Housing in another county. Ms X argued the decision prevented her from relocating. The Ombudsman considered whether the Council’s refusal amounted to maladministration or breach of its duties under the Care Act 2014 and found the Council had properly assessed Ms X’s needs, followed statutory guidance, and lawfully declined to fund the move as a placement.
What happened
In 2025, Ms X applied to move to Extra Care Housing located in a different county. The Council for that area advised Ms X that only her current local authority, Rutland County Council, could fund care in the new location. The individual then requested support from Rutland County Council.
The Council conducted an assessment under the Care Act 2014 and determined that while the individual met eligibility criteria for care and support, these could be met without specialist accommodation and therefore the move was not required to be funded as housing under the Care Act. The Council emphasised that the desire to move was a choice, voluntary and advising that refusing to support this desire was consistent with Care Act statutory guidance.
What was found
The final refusal to investigate further concluded Rutland County Council had considered all relevant factors before refusing to accept continuing ordinary residence responsibility for funding the care that would be needed. As there was no evidence of fault in the decision-making process, the Ombudsman simply declined to investigate.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Ombudsman’s conclusion that Rutland County Council was entitled to decline to fund the care in a voluntary out-of-area move would surprise many members of the public who have absorbed a lot of the rhetoric related to person-centredness. In that situation, one might quite naturally say – ‘Well, why not support the person’s desire to move if Extra Care Housing is going to provide a means to prevent or reduce increasing social care needs? Why should she just not go there anyway and take a tenancy on a direct basis and then present for care? Why should it matter whether Rutland pays for it, rather than the other Council, really?’
The answer, however, is not just on account of the inconvenience of having clients residing out of the area, to review and with whom to keep in touch.
There are several other features that need to be factored in, and which do not appear to have been of any interest to the investigator:
A need to be in ‘specialised’ accommodation is not necessarily a need to be in specified accommodation, on which the decision to refuse continuing ordinary residence responsibility actually turns.
A choice to be a tenant in accommodation – in housing that counts as specified accommodation (which does not include all supported living or extra care accommodation) carries with it the presumption that one will remain the continuing ordinary residence responsibility of one’s former council, IF, and only if, magic words are put on the care plan – not the assessment document please note.
If that happens, the current council’s charging policy applies to whatever care happens to cost out of area, even though the current council will be paying for the care.
If one becomes a tenant, off of one’s own bat, as it were, and one can get a nomination to go INTO extra care housing, but without the magic words on the care plan from one’s outgoing authority – or if the accommodation doesn’t quite make it into the definition of specified accommodation – then one becomes the responsibility of that new council’s social care team.
What was the other Council doing, we would ask, saying that the other Council’s willingness to support the move with the magic words was the only way she could move in? The other Council doesn’t seem to have thought it possible for this woman to access the accommodation without bringing the former Council’s responsibility with her! So the real problem was that this woman complained against the wrong Council?
Or is there something less transparent actually going on? Did the destination Council have direct control over anyone’s accessing a tenancy in that property, for instance through nomination rights, or knowledge that the only way that a care provider would assert nomination rights to a tenancy with a provider (with whom it was in contract) in favour of an out of area person would be if they came with an agreed contract for the CARE element of the extra care accommodation?
If this woman qualified for housing benefit or UC payments for rent, the funding of the district council there, and the status of the specific housing provider might have been such that the normal reimbursement from central government could not have been expected to flow to that council. We are just not told, here.
The professional conclusion here that “specialist accommodation was not required” is a conclusion that ‘accommodation plus’ is not needed, but is not determinative of whether the proper approach was taken to the question whether the woman needed to be living in specified accommodation in order that her needs would become capable of being met.
NO social services council can fund the housing, we should make clear, unless the person qualifies for accommodation plus – ie a finding that not only their needs ‘can only be met if they are living in specified accommodation’ but a finding that their needs ‘INCLUDE a specialist form of housing as the only feasible means of delivering adult social care’. That sort of a conclusion has been limited, in practice, in light of the Campbell case, May 2024 (Court of Appeal) which established the absence of any lawful authority for any social services council to meet needs in that way where the person is someone who can access the Housing Act 1996 in either Part 6 or Part 7 mode (the register or the homelessness team).
The only people to whom this decision does not apply are people who cannot use the Housing Act (largely people subject to immigration control) and people who lack capacity to take a tenancy at all, and have no deputy with the special form of wording that the Courts have said is needed to extend the normal scope of deputyship powers.
The LGSCO’s attitude to the simplicity of the issues here illustrates the legal tension between councils’ statutory duties and individuals’ right to choose where they live – the only sense there is, in the notion of that latter ‘right’, is if one qualifies it with the caveat: “and always assuming that one can afford it and get access to the tenure that underpins the right to move in!”.
While councils are not required to fund voluntary out-of-area placements, they must still provide evidence that the individual’s needs and wellbeing were fully considered. There is a risk that simply characterising a move as “voluntary” can lead to overlooking duties to enable choice and control in one’s living arrangements and obscure whether being moved may in fact be the only way to meet certain eligible needs (for accommodation plus clients) or whether moving to a tenancy where one must pay rent might be the best way of facilitating that duty. Community care law identifies the importance of fully exploring whether alternative accommodation might be the only way to safely and appropriately meet eligible needs, and the suitability of the accommodation being left and being proposed, particularly where wellbeing, social isolation, or access to support networks are at stake. Blanket or policy-led refusals without detailed lawful justification are vulnerable to challenge and may contravene statutory requirements for transparent, reasoned decision-making.
The Ombudsman applied its usual threshold that where there is no evidence of fault in the process, it will not investigate or question the merits of a council’s decision. This approach is consistent with the Local Government Act 1974, which limits the Ombudsman to reviewing maladministration, not substituting its own judgment. However, the Ombudsman’s decision arguably reflects a basic reading of the Care Act’s personalisation and wellbeing principles.
While technically correct in law, it did not do much for public education and awareness of some of the subtleties and nuances of the Care Act and the Guidance.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Rutland County Council (25 000 518) report. If you are affected by the issues in this report, please consider asking a free, one-off question, anonymously, at a level of principle, here. Our experts’ response will give you an opinion which may then help you and the broader community, when posted.
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