Date of decision: 27 March 2026
Summary
An adult woman, Miss X, receiving adult social care complained that Norfolk County Council reduced her home support hours from six per week to four (two of which were from a PA) and then reduced that further to one agency visit of 2 hours per fortnight, without evidence it had considered her care and support needs or updated her care plan, leaving her struggling at home and with family responsibilities.
What happened
At the beginning of 2024, Miss X was receiving six hours of support each week, arranged by the Council under a care and support plan and delivered by two separate providers.
In July 2024, one of these providers withdrew from involvement after a breakdown in the relationship with her, prompting the Council to review her care needs. Following that review, the Council decided she no longer required two hours per week that had been used for dog training and socialising, and it reduced her total support to four hours per week, still spread across two providers, with two of those hours delivered by a personal assistant funded through her package.
In March 2025, support from the personal assistant ended, and Miss X identified an agency that could provide the same kind of support instead. Because the agency charged more than the personal assistant, the Council agreed only to fund two hours of support per fortnight with the agency, and it was unable to show any records that this reduction was based on a fresh consideration of her care and support needs rather than on cost. After the agency was agreed, there was a meeting between Miss X, a Council support worker and an agency support worker, during which they confirmed that agency support would start the following week, with visits every two weeks thereafter.
When the agency worker attended the first planned visit, Miss X was not at home. Over the following week, both the Council and the agency contacted her to ask her to confirm she still wanted the fortnightly support, but she did not give that confirmation, so the agency worker did not attend the next booked appointment. At the beginning of July 2025, the Council contacted the agency again and they agreed the support would resume, restoring some level of service, but by then her funded support had effectively been cut from the original six hours per week to six hours per fortnight.
She pursued a complaint saying the Council had not ensured she received services in line with her care plan and had not properly reviewed her needs before cutting her hours.
In response to the Ombudsman’s enquiries, the Council accepted there had been problems and proposed remedies: an apology to Miss X, a symbolic payment of £250 for the time and trouble of raising the complaint, another £250 to recognise how her assessments had been handled and the outcomes, and allocation of a new social worker to complete a reassessment and liaise with children’s services to support the family.
The Ombudsman considered this offer and went on to set out binding actions and timescales for the Council to put things right.
What was found
The Ombudsman decided the Council was at fault because it reduced Miss X’s support without any evidence that it had properly considered her Care Act care and support needs, personal outcomes or wellbeing when making that decision. Instead, the reduction followed the move from a cheaper personal assistant to a more expensive agency, so the cut was effectively driven by cost rather than a lawful reassessment of eligible needs. This failure caused her distress, frustration and uncertainty.
The Ombudsman found no fault in how the Council supported contact between Miss X and the agency after she missed the first visit, as records showed the Council and provider tried to contact her and then re-established support in early July. However, the core failing remained the unjustified reduction in funded hours without a needs‑based rationale, which meant the Council did not meet its duty to ensure services matched the care plan and assessed needs under the Care Act 2014.
To remedy the injustice, within one month the Council must apologise, allocate a new social worker, carry out a fresh reassessment of Miss X’s care and support needs in liaison with children’s services, and make a total symbolic payment of £500 recognising both the time and trouble of complaining and the impact of reducing her support without properly considering her needs and provide evidence to the Ombudsman that it has completed these actions.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
Councils must not reduce Care Act support simply because a new provider is more expensive; they must first revisit the individual’s needs, outcomes and wellbeing through a lawful assessment, not treat the care package as a budget to be trimmed around a price point.
Community care law makes clear (and has done since 1997 in the infamous Gloucestershire case) that needs-led decision-making and adherence to the statutory eligibility framework and the obligation to deliver what is in the care plan, until a lawful reassessment has occurred, cannot be displaced by local cost pressures, and the facts here show that the reduction from the two hours of PA time per week to 2 hours per fortnight followed a change of provider rather than any recorded change in Miss X’s level of need or risk.
Where a long‑standing care and support plan is changed in a way that significantly reduces provision, s27 Care Act stresses that the authority should carry out a structured proportionate reassessment which revisits the person’s difficulties across the daily living domains. Caselaw from the later 1990s (Killigrew), required the articulation of how they are now “able to achieve” key outcomes, if their needs are said to have lessened. Fundamentally, even when the needs have not lessened, but a cheaper way of meeting the need has been identified, a revised care plan must still have a rational underpinning that is coherent for regarding reduced provision as still keeping the impact on their wellbeing arising from inability to achieve across two or more domains, down to something less than significant. Otherwise the duty has not been properly discharged.
In this case, the Ombudsman rightly criticises the absence of such a needs‑based rationale, but the analysis could go further by emphasising the specific statutory test for eligibility and the requirement to evidence any conclusion that previously eligible needs can now be safely met with far fewer hours.
The scenario also engages the broader public law duty to involve the person properly in any reassessment or review, including giving clear information about proposals to cut support, exploring the impact on family responsibilities and wellbeing, and recording how any informal input from relatives will interact with the formal package.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Norfolk County Council (25 007 602) 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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