Date of decision:
03 July 2025
Summary
A father complained that Dorset Council wrongly refused his claim for extra heating and electricity costs to be treated as disability related expenditure in his son’s financial assessment. He argued the national figures used by the Council were flawed and left his son unfairly disadvantaged.
What happened
The complainant’s son had eligible care and support needs requiring a financial assessment by the Council to determine his contribution toward care costs. As part of this assessment, the complainant requested that the Council recognise higher gas and electricity use as disability related expenditure.
The Council reviewed the request and agreed to allow a weekly amount of £0.86 in relation to additional fuel expenditure. This calculation was derived by deducting the national average consumption figure for a single person in a detached property from the son’s estimated usage, with the remainder allowed as additional disability related expenditure.
The complainant disputed the accuracy of the ‘national average’ figure applied by the Council, stating it amounted to over £2,744 per year—contradicting Ofgem’s figure of around £1,800. He argued that the Council’s approach and the underlying National Association of Financial Assessment Officers (NAFAO) figures exaggerated average fuel costs, substantially reducing the allowance recognised as disability related expenditure.
In response, the Council provided its charging policy, confirming its reliance on data produced annually by NAFAO. The Ombudsman reviewed the Council’s policy and assessment process alongside the complainant’s evidence. The Ombudsman found that statutory guidance does not mandate use of a specific data source for these calculations, giving councils discretion in selecting reference figures.
What was found
The Ombudsman concluded there was no evidence of fault. The Council had acted in line with its published charging policy, which lawfully relied on NAFAO figures. As the Council had properly applied its policy when deciding the son’s disability related expenditure allowance, the Ombudsman determined there was no maladministration and declined to investigate further.
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 supporting statutory guidance make it clear that councils must ensure financial assessments are person-centred and take account of individual disability-related expenditure where reasonable and evidenced. While councils are given discretion in policies used to set allowance rates, they cannot adopt blanket approaches which ignore evidence of unusually high costs arising from disability, or fail to consider representations of service users and carers as to the legitimacy of their approaches because of the underlying duty in public law to act rationally.
There is a legal duty to promote individual wellbeing and to avoid indirect discrimination, including through financial assessments, and a human rights responsibility under Article 14 to avoid discrimination in the context of the State’s approach to people’s own money.
If the matter had gone to Judicial Review, the Council would have been expected to justify the evidence base for any comparative figures, and to explain why long-standing nationwide concerns about the NAFAO figures should not be regarded as going to the heart of the legitimacy of relying on those figures. The father would be well advised to refuse to pay the charge and then raise this question in any legal proceedings brought against his son for the debt.
The nationwide concern relates to the perception that the NAFAO figures have simply been uprated for inflation whilst having started from a basis that is no longer justified, because of improvements in insulation standards across the country since the figures for average Heating were first identified.
The logic is that inflating even by a proper percentage is a refusal to take account of the hugely relevant consideration that most people’s properties will have in fact become more environmentally sound and that people’s average heating bills will have gone down in proportion to their other spending and the size of their property, even though the cost of fuel has gone up markedly for everyone. This makes it much harder for disabled people to contend that their heating costs are increased by their condition or the amount of time they tend to be staying at home or heating rooms for carers.
Public law however says that any consideration must be relevant and rational; the figures and approach of NAFAO are well known to be open to the above criticism and are thus not defensibly rational.
NAFAO is not a public body, however. It is a members’ association, and not able to be obliged to explain itself to the Ombudsman… which we think should have been explained.
This report is therefore best regarded as the ombudsman stepping back from being drawn into a dispute that can only be resolved by a judicial review brought by an individual with a very good understanding of maths and environmental standards applied to new buildings over the years.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Dorset Council (24 023 408) 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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