Date of decision: 23 July 2025
Summary
A disabled adult, Mr D, required transport to access a day centre. He experienced distress when the Council stopped funding his taxi two weeks earlier than anticipated and insisted he use his Motability car. The abrupt transition placed financial and emotional strain on Mr D and his mother and carer, Miss D, as alternative arrangements proved unworkable and fuel costs were not covered.
What happened
Mr D, a young adult requiring care due to disability, was someone who had had a Motability car since he was an infant.
On reaching adulthood, his care was moved from the Council’s Children’s Services to its Adult Social Care’s Transitions Team, responsible for a s58 Care Act transition assessment.
It provided Mr D with support through a care and support plan with the authority of Adults’ Services. As part of this provision, he received] funded taxi transport from the Council to attend a day centre outside his local area. Miss D, Mr D’s mother, said Mr D’s old social worker had advised on the possibility that the taxi might stop, but advised she would advocate on behalf of Mr D to retain it for him.
In early August 2024, responsibility for his care [and support] plan transferred to a new social worker, and it was noted at this point on the Council’s file that they had agreed to backdate some costs and fund the taxi for a further six weeks, whilst alternative transport solutions were explored.
One week later, the social worker notified the taxi service that its contract would end two weeks earlier than initially planned and began seeking alternative transport using Mr D’s Motability car.
On 15 August, the social worker informed Miss D that the taxi provision was temporary and the Council was exploring other options regarding transport. The staff noted Miss D’s reservations about the use of agency support to enable Mr D use of his own Motability vehicle.
Miss D requested to speak with a manager. This took place on August 30th and it was noted that Mr D had said he was not able to attend the day centre without his taxi but that the social worker advised Mr D the Council could arrange support to facilitate this, and that even though Miss D said she needed the car to take her other children to school, do the shopping, attend GP appointments, do the laundry, the car was not intended for that sort of use.
Ultimately, either a PA or community support could have been provided to enable access between home and the day centre. But when the agency contacted the family, the PA advised that the care agency would not be able to provide the care at the hours or times Mr D needed…
Despite the Council sourcing a care provider in September 2024 willing to supply a PA, communication with the social worker broke down as she raised concerns about practicalities and staff driving the Motability car. The taxi company declined further trips without Council payment confirmation, resulting in Mr D’s inability to attend the day centre.
The Council responded to the complaint about the taxi stopping, in September and advised ample notice was provided and repeated that Mr D’s car was not for family use, asserting that it should have been used only for Mr D’s needs.
Shortly after, Miss D also reported Mr D could not afford the fuel costs for his car. The Council refused to fund fuel costs, directing the carer to the DWP.
Following the end of the taxi service, the carer provided transport herself but struggled financially. Regular contact between Miss D and the Council Duty Team, after the social worker left, continued into January 2025.
In January 2025 the carer’s complaint to the Ombudsman cited abrupt withdrawal of taxi funding, unclear communication, lack of support for fuel expenses, and impractical alternative arrangements.
What was found
The Council maintained it had used a strengths-based approach and asserted adequate notice was given, but records showed inconsistencies in timing and a lack of consultation prior to decision-making.
The Ombudsman found the Council acted within policy by seeking better-value transport and leveraging the Motability car into the means to meet need.
However, the Care and Support Statutory Guidance also says a council must account for individual preferences. The Council’s own policy also said it would explore why someone’s view that they should not be expected to use their Motability car would be taken into account.
The Ombudsman expected to see documentation of this, which was not present. Instead the timeline suggested that the Council had already made its decision – it had cancelled the taxi contract – before advising Miss D, at relatively short notice. The Council had a record of Miss D contacting it to advise the service stopped around two weeks earlier than the Council said it did. There was no record of the Council responding to Miss D’s contact.
Ultimately, the Ombudsman’s investigation showed the Council was legitimately faulted for not properly consulting with Mr and Miss D and for poor communication regarding when taxi funding would stop. This included early cancellation of the taxi service without documented reasoning and failure to respond to Miss D’s contact that advised the service to stop early.
The Ombudsman was unable to comment on the complaint raised by Miss D in relation to the inability of the PA to provide the support the Council had asked it to provide. The Council’s records related to the conversation differed from Miss D’s recollection – it was the position of the provider that Miss D wanted them to use their own car, not the Motability vehicle, whilst hers was that they’d said there was no capacity for the timing of the journey wanted. The competing accounts made it impossible for the Ombudsman to come to a conclusion on this part of the matter.
Finally, failure to explore discretionary fuel funding further breached the Council’s commitment to flexibility. These faults caused significant distress and financial uncertainty for the individual and carer during the transition. The Council agreed to apologise and pay £100 as symbolic compensation for the distress and inconvenience experienced.
The investigator thought it was not a matter of concern that the Council’s policy now said definitively it will not meet fuel costs. [We explain below why this cannot possibly be correct!].
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Ombudsman’s account highlights several critical issues often seen in practice, but it misses and sometimes downplays key legal requirements relating to Care Act duties and principles. Case law and statutory guidance in community care law require not only consultation with carers and service users, but also demonstrably reasonable, transparent, and evidence-based individualised care planning and why the many strengths that councils will point to, can be seen adequately to meet needs to the level implicitly required by the Care Act.
Public law principles reinforce that the sufficiency of support (including transport arrangements and inclusion of fuel costs) must be justified in a way that connects the budget to actual assessed need, rather than policy or resource-driven assumptions.
In this scenario, ending transport funding without robust, participative consultation with both the disabled person and their carer, and without properly exploring workable alternatives—including fuel support—could be viewed not merely as poor practice, but as a breach of statutory duties regarding involvement and the requirement to build plans around individual need and carer willingness. The withdrawal of a previously relied-upon service necessitates a proportionate re-assessment before any cut is enacted.
Similarly, public law demands that all potentially relevant factors (financial hardship, practical feasibility, emotional strain) are taken into account, rather than left to generic signposting or informal arrangements.
With regard to the operation of the Motability car scheme, the Council was correct to advise that the car is primarily for the benefit of Mr D. This is a scheme open to recipients of certain disability benefits that enables claimants to utilise benefit payments to lease a vehicle through the scheme. The individual does not have to be in the car for every journey, as long as the disabled applicant benefits, which is where the discretionary rules could have been applied to enable consideration of methods outside of the Motability car for access to the day centre.
There is no obligation on the part of any owner of a Motability car to make sure it is available for use at all times when the care plan might be needing it to be. It is about willingness, not coercion. If the car is not available at all, then that is a misuse of the Motability component for the person, for which the appointee will no doubt have to answer.
Taking the Mobility Component as Money
- When the mobility component of benefits (such as PIP or DLA) is taken as money and not exchanged for a lease vehicle, there is no restriction on how the funds are used; the allowance is paid directly to the beneficiary and can be spent as one wishes.
- This aligns with Department for Work and Pensions policy: once the benefit is received as a cash payment, there is no requirement or mechanism to track its use.
Using the Mobility Component for a Car Lease
- When opting for the Motability Scheme, the mobility allowance is paid directly from the relevant agency (e.g., DWP) to Motability for the lease of a chosen vehicle.
- You can select any vehicle on the Motability price list that fits your needs; there is no set limit on vehicle size except what is offered through the scheme — choices range from small cars to large multi-purpose vehicles.
- If the weekly cost of the vehicle lease is less than your total mobility allowance, the difference is paid directly to you (the customer) by the benefit agency, and you may use this money as you wish; there is no constraint on its use.
Community care law confirms that care planning must consider the impact on carers, explicitly, because it is their WILLINGNESS to be part of the care package that matters. So here, if the issue was that the mother was unavailable to drive the vehicle – because at the time the journey was required, she was taking children to school, it is a red herring to suggest that this is an indefensible position. It is one for the DWP, not the Council wearing its adult social care hat! This is not strengths based care planning, it is pulling the wool over the carer’s eyes, on account of desperation, in our view.
The investigator asserts that the Motability scheme does not include fuel costs. This is rubbish. Once you have claimed it and qualified, you can spend it on fuel as long as you have leased a car that leaves something over, under the level you’ve qualified for.
Surrey’s OLD transport policy said If somebody said that was not possible it would explore the reasons before making a decision and that it would not normally consider petrol costs or other expenses for someone who had Mobility component and had spent it on a car.
We note that the Council introduced a new version of its Adults Travel Policy. The new policy said that it “would expect a service user to use the vehicle to meet their transport needs.” The revised Policy said “[n]o petrol costs of other expenses will be considered for funding by the council”.
This is a ‘nudge’ approach to firming a policy up into a rule which the legal department should have advised against in our view. The investigator did not challenge this, but it clearly cannot be correct, based as it appears to have been on forgetting that a council can never safely say ‘We never…’!
This particular Ombudsman’s report does not make clear the Council’s duty to produce a transparent, reasoned explanation for why discretionary fuel support was not offered under s19 (the power to meet needs in any event) and whether all suitable alternatives were not only considered but adequately communicated, nor does it scrutinise the sufficiency of the new arrangements.
Routine reliance on informal carer support, risks unlawful assumptions about carer ability and willingness, and regularly results in packages that are not co-produced or responsive to significant impact on wellbeing.
Advocacy groups should ensure the validity of any cuts or changes to arrangements is fully scrutinised using public law grounds. Members of the public struggling with abrupt changes must press for explicit written reasons and invoke complaints and legal redress where critical statutory steps have been skipped.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Surrey County Council (24 012 883) 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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