Date of decision: 06 November 2025
Summary
A woman caring at home for her disabled adult son asked the Council for regular respite breaks but did not receive the ongoing support it accepted she needed. The prolonged lack of respite caused significant strain on her health and wellbeing, and the Ombudsman found avoidable distress and uncertainty for repeated non-provision.
What happened
The complaint concerned West Sussex County Council’s response to an informal carer’s repeated requests for respite from caring for her adult son with disabilities, who lived with her at home. The son had an assessed package of care, and the mother was recognised as his informal carer, but the continuity and frequency of respite support became the central issue of the report.
In June 2023, during the son’s needs assessment, the mother asked the Council to provide respite from her caring role as soon as possible and specified she needed a break once every three months. She had previously used a particular location for respite stays with her son and his professional carers, and wished to continue using that arrangement. [We are not told if this was a hotel or a holiday home or for how long the break would be, but the Suffolk (BG) case makes it clear that this is a form of provision (the funding for this sort of a break) that cannot be excluded by councils acting under the Care Act.]
Respite planned for July 2023 at that usual location was not funded by the Council, and in October 2023 the mother complained to the Council about its refusal to meet the cost of that break. The complaint was specifically about the Council’s refusal to fund respite at the chosen location, where she, her son and his professional carers had previously gone for a respite break.
In January and March 2024, the Council issued complaint responses stating that respite at the mother’s preferred location was not cost‑effective and was therefore refused. However, in those responses the Council again noted that she had a need for respite every three months, as already recorded in the reassessment of her son’s needs which had recently been undertaken.
In early 2024, the Council carried out a formal carer’s assessment for the mother. This assessment recorded that she was no longer able or willing to continue caring for her son, and also noted she declined a carer support plan because she was not ‘eligible’ for Direct Payments [the report does not make it clear whether this means the council had told her she could not expect to be paid through her son’s direct payments because she was living in the same household or whether it means it would not provide a direct payment to her for carer’s support needs for her to spend on respite breaks, when she was going too]. It was said that her needs could instead be met through a referral to the Council’s adult services [the report may mean for her son or for her but it is not clear]. The assessment referred to her need for respite and captured her concern that previous respite provision had been withdrawn by the Council, but it did not include any clear recommendations or specific provision to meet her respite needs.
By May 2024, the mother complained to the Ombudsman that the Council had not provided any respite, despite her requests and the recorded need. The Ombudsman decided the Council should first be given a further opportunity to fully consider her complaint before a full Ombudsman investigation proceeded.
In August 2024, the Council issued a further stage one complaint response. In that response, it accepted it had not addressed her complaint that she had not received respite every three months as requested, apologised to her, and confirmed it was working to put care arrangements in place for her son so that she could take a planned break later that month.
The mother did receive respite in August 2024, when her son received care at home that allowed her to have a break. However, there was still no pattern of respite every three months.
In April 2025, the Council issued a stage two complaint response. In this it explained that the son had received care at home while the mother had a break in August 2024 and again during her planned hospital stay and recovery period in March and April 2025, and it apologised for the distress caused by uncertainty over funding for the son’s care during that recovery period. The Council also said it would provide respite during her upcoming planned hospital stay and recovery in June 2025, and that it would ensure respite was built into her son’s package of care.
The mother told the Ombudsman she had received no further respite beyond that described. In response to initial Ombudsman enquiries, the Council said it had identified a need for respite in September 2023 and accepted that, although its own assessment did not explicitly state respite was needed every three months, it did not contest the mother’s view that this frequency was required. The Council also indicated that the local Integrated Care Board (ICB) would need to agree funding for respite and that it was working with the ICB to put in place a sustainable long‑term solution with regular respite built into the son’s budget. Throughout the period from July 2023 until August 2024, the mother therefore had no respite from her caring role, despite her stated needs and the Council’s recognition that respite was required. After August 2024, respite was again only provided on an ad hoc basis linked to her hospital admissions in March and April 2025, rather than at regular three‑monthly intervals.
What was found
The Ombudsman found that under section 10 of the Care Act 2014, the Council was required to carry out a carer’s assessment that properly considered the carer’s ability and willingness to continue caring, the outcomes she wished to achieve, and how support, including respite, could contribute to those outcomes. The Ombudsman concluded the Council’s carer’s assessment in early 2024 was poor because it did not clearly set out what respite support was needed or how that support would be provided, despite recording that previous respite had been withdrawn and the carer needed respite “even more now”.
Failing to set out any consequential action or provision in the carer’s assessment, beyond noting the carer did not want a carer support plan, was found to be fault and a breach of the Council’s statutory duty to properly assess and respond to identified carer needs. This fault caused avoidable distress and uncertainty to the carer, who remained unclear how her need for respite would be met.
The Council later accepted that the carer needed respite, and it did not dispute her view that respite should be provided every three months. Once this need was accepted, the Council had a duty to meet it, subject to any financial assessment of the son, and therefore should have provided respite every three months from July 2023 onwards; its failure to do so was fault. This left the carer without any respite until August 2024, which the Ombudsman considered a significant injustice.
After providing respite in August 2024, the Council had a further opportunity to put matters right by arranging ongoing respite every three months, but did not do so. The next respite was only arranged between March and April 2025 in connection with the carer’s hospital admission and recovery, so the Ombudsman found additional fault for this continuing failure, which further added to the carer’s distress.
The Ombudsman also noted the Council’s explanation that the ICB would need to agree respite funding and that work was underway on a long‑term solution with regular respite for the mother built into the son’s budget.
The agreed remedy included an apology and a symbolic financial payment. The Council was required to apologise to the mother in line with the Ombudsman’s published guidance on remedies and to pay her £500 to recognise the avoidable distress caused by failing to arrange regular respite for her as a carer. The Ombudsman also required the Council to review her carer’s assessment so it properly considered her respite needs and the provision required to meet those needs. Until then, the Council was to provide Mrs X with respite every three months.
In addition, within two months of the decision, the Council had to set out the steps it had taken to ensure that, where carer respite needs are identified in future carers’ assessments, it gives proper consideration to how those needs should be met, and to provide evidence to the Ombudsman that these actions had been completed.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Ombudsman’s reasoning reflects the core duties under the Care Act to assess carers’ needs and to meet eligible needs once accepted. Duties to assess and to meet needs are not diluted by the mechanics of joint arrangements with health bodies; the Ombudsman notes this in passing in relation to ICB funding, but does not fully spell out that public law principles prohibit the use of commissioning or pooled‑budget arrangements as a reason for delay or partial delivery of an accepted respite pattern. The report does not give information as to the involvement of the ICB in this matter, but the implication is that there was a joint funding arrangement of some kind. The Ombudsman does not accept the reference to the ICB’s involvement as a reason for the Council not to meet its statutory obligations. Once a council has made a professional judgment that a particular level and pattern of support is required, sufficiency and regularity become integral to lawfulness. Although the report does refer to the requirement to carry out a carer’s assessment in the Care Act 2014, section 10, the report could have spelt out more clearly that the failure to embed respite three‑monthly into the son’s care plan and budget from late 2023 was potentially a continuing breach of duty, rather than just maladministration.
Any Care Act assessment must be appropriate and proportionate and must record outcomes, impact on wellbeing and the concrete steps to be taken; where, as here, the carer’s assessment records an escalating inability or unwillingness to keep caring and identifies a need for respite but then omits a specific recommendation and delivery mechanism, community care case law would treat that as an unlawful assessment, not just a “poor” one. The Ombudsman does describe the assessment as poor and faulty but does not explicitly link the omissions to the full set of statutory assessment regulations and wellbeing duties that case law, such as Merton, has treated as individually enforceable. Similarly, public law requires that professional judgments be evidence‑based and transparent; the absence of a fully reasoned explanation of why respite ceased for over a year, and how the council reconciled this with its acknowledgment of a gap in the son’s care, every three months, looks, in community care law terms, like a failure to give proper reasons and a breach of rationality requirements, which could have left the Council’s decision making vulnerable to a public law challenge.
Community care law also underlines the distinction between general “target” duties and specific, enforceable duties owed to individuals once an assessment has identified an eligible need. In this case, once the council accepted that the mother required respite of a particular frequency and that her caring role was at risk, the duty to meet that need every three months became an individual right, not a matter of broad policy or “best endeavours”; the Ombudsman recognises that respite should have been provided, but could have been clearer that the council’s pattern of ad hoc respite linked only to hospital admissions was inconsistent with the principle that duties must be delivered even where budgets are tight or joint funding is complex. Community care case law on carers’ rights also highlights that the carer’s own wellbeing and the balance between her wellbeing and that of the person cared for must be consciously weighed, with explicit reasoning; here the report notes the impact on the mother’s health but does not explicitly critique the council’s failure to demonstrate any structured balancing exercise under wellbeing principles when it failed to put in regular respite.
From a public law perspective, the remedial response in the report is relatively modest compared with the seriousness of the failures described. Community care law has developed concepts such as restitution and robust prospective obligations where councils have saved money by not delivering services they were duty‑bound to provide; in that light, a one‑off payment of £500 and a short‑term requirement to provide respite every three months until review looks out of proportion to nearly two years without agreed breaks, particularly where the carer had made clear she was close to being unable or unwilling to continue. The report could have gone further by insisting on a clear, costed, recurring respite arrangement embedded in both the son’s care plan and the carer’s support plan, with monitoring duties and a requirement to review all similar carer assessments where respite has been noted but not concretely scheduled.
Councils should respond to this decision by tightening practice at three points: first, ensuring that every carer’s assessment that identifies respite need leads to a specific, time‑bound offer and identifies how it will be funded and delivered; second, treating any pause or interruption in agreed respite as requiring a formal review decision with reasons rather than allowing informal drift; and third, training staff that joint working with health bodies, internal budget constraints or debates about “cost‑effective” locations cannot undermine the duty to meet an agreed level of need, although they may legitimately shape how and where that duty is carried out. For carers and advocates, the case underlines the value of insisting that agreed respite patterns are written explicitly into care and support plans, with dates, frequency and responsible teams named, and of challenging any slippage promptly by reference to public law duties to act rationally, fairly and consistently with the Care Act framework.
The fact that W Sussex was reported as not contesting the mother’s requirement for respite every 3 months made us smile. What would the point have been of contesting something that is entirely up to the carer? Willingness is not something that can be assessed. Unwillingness is something that needs to be recorded and acted upon, because it is subjective to the unwilling person and leaves a gap in the care of the person who is cared for and/or formally eligible. The carer cannot be obliged to care, nor to tide the Council over!
The fact, however, that it was not contested meant that it was accepted that during those periods, every 3 months, she was not to be taken to be providing care unpaid. We think it is helpful to think of respite as just another name for unmet needs of the underlying person. On that footing, her son needed a Care Act reassessment (or an initial assessment if he was not actually already a council client). And it would have been a safeguarding matter had nobody thought that that was appropriate, or if the mother had refused access, even with the authority of a welfare power of attorney; councils often have to engage with people whom they do not think are acting in an incapacitated person’s best interests, even if it is for conscientious reasons. We think too that there would have been a dispute about whether he needed agency care in that scenario, because there is a hint of an issue whether anyone else other than the mother and the current PA team, could possibly provide for the needs. We think that underlying this dispute, there might have been an ongoing discussion about how to solve the problem that she could not be managing the direct payment for her son, and also paid through it, because she would have been the employer AND the employee, or the purchaser AND the provider.
So we think this is a very feeble report for not going into matters more deeply, to educate the public.
NB: The report says that respite services are means-tested, so the carer may have to contribute towards the cost. This is only true if the form of the respite is direct funding for the carer to go away. The cost of back-filling the time that the carer had been providing to cover the need directly, whilst the carer is not caring, is a service delivered directly to the needy person – it is not ever allowed to be charged to the carer.
s14(3) – The power to make a charge under subsection (1) for meeting a carer’s needs for support under section 20 by providing care and support to the adult needing care may not be exercised so as to charge the carer.
If the underlying needy person is incapacitated and cannot agree to being assessed for the respite service by way of their carer’s support plan, some other way of providing respite should be found, which will invariably involve increasing the Care Package for the underlying person, using the Mental Capacity Act and best interests.
s20(6) A local authority may meet a carer’s needs for support if it is satisfied that it is not required to meet the carer’s needs under this section; but, in so far as meeting the carer’s needs involves the provision of care and support to the adult needing care, it may do so only if the adult needing care agrees to the needs being met in that way.
20(7) A local authority may meet some or all of a carer’s needs for support in a way which involves the provision of care and support to the adult needing care, even if the authority would not be required to meet the adult’s needs for care and support under section 18.
20(8) Where a local authority is required by this section to meet some or all of a carer’s needs for support but it does not prove feasible for it to do so by providing care and support to the adult needing care, it must, so far as it is feasible to do so, identify some other way in which to do so.
All of these sections were relevant to the situation – potentially – but they are not mentioned by the ombudsman’s investigator. The Guidance explains these rather opaque provisions:
8.49 Where a carer has eligible support needs of their own, the local authority has a duty, or in some cases a power, to arrange support to meet their needs. Where a local authority is meeting the needs of a carer by providing a service directly to a carer, for example, a relaxation class or driving lessons, it has the power to charge the carer. However, a local authority must not charge a carer for care and support provided directly to the person they care for under any circumstances.
8.51 While charging carers may be appropriate in some circumstances, it is very unlikely to be efficient to systematically charge carers for meeting their eligible needs. This is because excessive charges are likely to lead to carers refusing support, which in turn will lead to carer breakdown and local authorities having to meet more of the eligible needs of people currently cared for voluntarily.
8.55 A carer’s assessment may identify that the carer’s needs for support could be met by arranging time away from the person they care for, for instance, so that they can stay on top of other aspects of their lives, and that in order to achieve this, services need to be provided to support the cared-for person in their absence. Such services would be provided directly to the cared-for person, even though they may meet the needs of both parties and may have been identified through the carer’s assessment. The local authority may not charge the carer for these services, and any charges should be based on the local authority’s policy on charging for non-residential care and support.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s West Sussex County Council (24 002 365) 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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