Date of decision: 07 July 2025
Summary
A man complained that West Northants Council failed to explain care charging rules after his father-in-law’s hospital discharge, delayed a financial assessment, and failed to provide essential documents. The individual was unaware he would be charged and unexpectedly faced over £2,600 in debt.
What happened
On 31 March 2023, an ambulance took the individual (Mr X) to hospital. The ambulance service noted he and his wife were seemingly struggling at home and raised a safeguarding referral with the Council. Hospital records confirmed Mr X had mental capacity and wanted his wife involved in decisions.
Mr X was discharged from hospital in April 2023. He began a package of support arranged by the Council or the NHS [the report does not make the commissioner clear] with carers visiting three times daily for 30 minutes.
On 15 May 2023, the Council conducted a care needs assessment. It found Mr X had long term eligible needs but must have been reassured that most of those would be met by his family on a “non-Council funded” basis. One daily personal care visit by a care agency, for the future, was deemed “Council funded.”
In early June 2023, when the Council’s Adult Social Care team checked back, it was noted that Mr X was receiving a reablement service. The assessor reviewed the support and, after noting improvements, reduced daily care from three daily visits to one morning visit from then on.
At the end of June 2023, the Council prepared a long term care and support plan, recording Mr X’s package had begun in early June with a charge of £69.30 per week. The Council claimed it sent this plan to Mr and Mrs X, but there is no evidence they received it.
On 31 July 2023, Mr X’s medical records showed marked improvement since his admission to hospital.
On 1 August 2023, during a safeguarding follow-up phone call, Mrs X told the Council that Mr X was doing well, was receiving daily care visits and weekly nurse visits, and that a visiting relative was providing extra help. Both Mr and Mrs X said they did not need further support. The Council closed the safeguarding concern.
On 31 January 2024, well over 6 months from hospitalisation, the Council contacted Mrs X about financial assessment for the first time.
Immediately afterwards, a relative (Mr Y) asked the Council to end services, stating that Mr X had not been aware of any care needs assessment and that Mrs X had long wished to stop the visits, which tended to cause Mr X anxiety.
At the end of March 2024, the Council completed a financial assessment and invoiced £2,633 in backdated care charges. On 1 May 2024, its debt recovery team demanded payment of the overdue sum.
Mr Y complained. At stage two, the Council admitted delays in ending the services and waived charges from February 2024 onwards but maintained that Mr X still owed £2,356 for charges from June 2023 to January 2024.
What was found
In view of Mr and Mrs X’s reaction to the Council’s correspondence about a financial assessment at the end of January 2024 and the immediate request to end the care package, that the Council received, it struck the investigator as more likely than not that they did not ever receive any advice on the Council’s rules for charging.
The Ombudsman therefore found the Council at fault for failing to explain that services would be chargeable after six weeks of free reablement care (in light of Care Act duties to provide clear charging information); for failing to provide written copies of the care assessment and care plan; and for significantly delaying the financial assessment until January 2024 whilst charging from June 2023. These faults deprived Mr X of informed choice and left him unknowingly accruing a debt exceeding £2,600, causing distress and financial injustice.
The investigator thought that had proper information been provided, Mr X would have insisted that the services stopped in August 2023. The Council had correctly recorded Mr X’s capacity, so there was no failure under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
The remedies ordered were a formal apology, waiving of charges from mid-August 2023 onwards, rather than merely from February 2024, and service improvements to ensure timely financial assessments, prompt provision of assessments and plans, and clear charging information early in the process.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Care Act 2014 and its regulations set out clear statutory duties for councils when arranging care services. This report gives an impression of a council engaged in delivery of Care Act ‘Lite,’ with none of the statutory processes being clear, organised or functionally apparent to the people in question. The Council has not existed for very long, but it appears to have fallen into bad practice, from an early stage.
These requirements in the legal framework include not only transparency around charging rules, but also the requirement to provide information in an accessible and timely manner before services commence.
Community care law makes it clear that written care needs assessments, care plans, and financial assessments must be provided promptly so that individuals can make genuinely informed choices about accepting or declining care and related charges.
Failure to do this—especially where services transition from free to chargeable—can not only cause distress but also render charging unlawful.
Intermediate care and reablement support services are for people usually after they have left hospital or when they are at risk of having to go into hospital. They are time-limited and aim to help a person to preserve or regain the ability to live independently. Regulations require intermediate care and reablement to be provided without charge for up to six weeks. This is for all adults who have the potential to benefit from reablement, whether or not they have even potentially eligible needs for continuing health care status or longer term care and support. Councils may charge where services are provided beyond the first six weeks but should consider continuing providing them without charge because of the preventive benefits.
In this report, the Council’s delays may well have breached section 17 of the Care Act, which requires completion and communication of a financial assessment before validly charging, as confirmed in judicial review case law. During Covid 19, advice was provided from government that it was acceptable to charge before financial assessment as long as one had conveyed that there would BE a charge and this is how most councils still operate, it should be noted, with delays in financial assessment of many weeks or even months.
The omission to send written care assessments and charging information is serious, given the Care Act itself, public law principles of fairness and the Guidance all require that such information be provided before statutory decisions are made. There should be procedures ensuring these documents are promptly delivered and acknowledged; relying on verbal explanations or unsubstantiated claims that documents were sent is insufficient in law and risks significant financial injustice.
Where councils delay or fail in these duties, affected individuals may challenge invoices and enforcement action as unlawful in the Administrative Court or use them as a defence in the civil courts. Where charges are introduced or increased, clear, written advance notice should be the standard. Such diligence prevents financial harm, ensures compliance with community care law, and upholds service users’ rights.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s West Northamptonshire Council (24 012 531) 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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