Date of decision: 30 October 2025
Summary
A man said the Council wrongly suspended the direct payment that funded his essential day‑to‑day care, leaving him without the support he relied on and worsening his health, wellbeing and finances.
What happened
In May 2023, the Council reviewed the man’s care needs after a period in which he had repeatedly cancelled home visits and avoided reviews, and social workers found his home was cluttered, hazardous, in disrepair and presenting fire risks.
The review recorded that he frequently fell, often remained upstairs for long periods, had declined social care interventions and repairs, and said he relied on two carers he knew, whom the Council now needed to contact.
The Council tried to speak to these carers, referred him to mental health services for a further review, and confirmed he already had an allocated Care Co-ordinator who had been trying to reach him.
A safeguarding concern was raised a couple of months later with the Council about his home conditions, and records suggest a multi‑agency review was scheduled for early August 2023, but there were no minutes or confirmation it actually took place or led to substantive action.
In September 2023, housing and support staff discussed creating a plan to clear the property so essential repairs could be done, but the Council’s floating support service ceased involvement with him a month later.
In December 2023, that service internally suggested the Council apply to become his financial appointee to help manage his money, but there is no evidence this proposal progressed or that any concrete steps followed.
In January 2024, the man telephoned the Council to say his current care package was unsuitable and that his former social worker had not resolved this. In early February 2024, the Council allocated a social worker to review his situation; he asked for the review to be done by telephone, but was told a home visit was required, and he in turn said he could not meet anyone in his home.
On 1 March 2024, he lodged a complaint with the Council saying he had multiple illnesses and could not help himself because of his physical and mental health needs, that only known people could act as carers and two friends currently helped him, whom he paid, but was struggling to reimburse. He explained that these carers prepared his meals because he had no usable cooking facilities, that he had been unable to leave his house for several years, and that the Council’s involvement had not helped and had made matters worse.
Also in March 2024, the Council reviewed his direct payments and confirmed they were being paid every four weeks to a named carer, but discovered it held no contact details for that person and became concerned the arrangement might be open to abuse. On 22 March 2024, the Council requested that his direct payments be stopped and held a multidisciplinary meeting with housing, mental health and social care professionals, who considered there was evidence the payments were not being used to meet his care needs, alongside ongoing concerns about his home conditions and lack of engagement.
The Council said it suspended his direct payments on 25 March 2024, but due to an administrative oversight payments actually continued until 22 April 2024. On 3 April 2024, officers spoke to him by telephone to explain why the direct payments had been stopped, followed up this discussion by email, and then met him on 11 April 2024 to discuss matters face‑to‑face.
On 18 April 2024, senior officers reviewed his case and requested a commissioned care package to cover his needs while direct payments were suspended, and on 19 April 2024 the Council contacted him to offer a home‑based care agency package on that basis.
The following week, the Council proposed another urgent review of his care needs, and on 21 May 2024 sent a complaint response apologising for delay, explaining that social workers had found him living in a neglected state which raised concerns about management of his direct payments, and stating that payments had been put on hold pending enquiries and that domiciliary care could be provided in the meantime; it also said a professionals’ meeting would be convened.
On 11 June 2024, the Council internally approved a commissioned care package and emailed him to propose a visit with the care agency so staff could better understand his needs. He replied that he had not asked for commissioned care but for an increase in his direct payments, and that he did not want carers brought into his home by the Council.
The Council responded that, at a recent meeting, it had shown him photographs of his home in poor condition and noted that these were taken during a period when friends funded via direct payments were supposed to be supporting him, yet there was little evidence of practical help being delivered. It told him his property was not habitable in its current state, said the direct payment arrangement was not working, and confirmed it had decided a commissioned package was required, asking him to try it and to agree a home visit.
On 21 June 2024, the Council visited with his Care Co-ordinator and other professionals; he refused to let them enter, declined to engage or accept the commissioned care on offer, and asked for his direct payments to be reinstated so his friends could keep supporting him. During this encounter, the Council completed a mental capacity assessment and recorded that he lacked capacity to decide about his care, support needs and living situation.
On 4 July 2024, the Council completed a further review of his care needs that summarised the situation so far. He then approached the Ombudsman; when the Council said he had not exhausted its complaints process, on 10 July 2024 the Ombudsman instructed it to consider and respond to his complaint within its published timescales.
The Council carried out a joint home visit with mental health services on 12 July 2024, again finding the property in poor condition and again recording that he refused commissioned care. According to these records, officers told him he had been assessed as lacking capacity in relation to where he lived and his care and support decisions, which he disputed, and that the Council would refer his case to its legal services.
On 29 July 2024, the Council referred him for an Independent Mental Capacity Advocate (IMCA). On 29 August 2024, he received confirmation that an IMCA had been allocated, but later complained that the advocate’s contact with him was limited, and repeatedly raised concerns about the IMCA’s lack of contact between late August and October 2024.
On 10 October 2024, the Council sent its stage two complaint response, again apologising for delay and stating that it had suspended his direct payments because of mismanagement identified at a home visit, which it believed justified its decision. It explained that it can stop direct payments where evidence shows they are not being used to meet identified needs, that it had offered him domiciliary care pending agreement on a longer‑term plan (which he had refused), and that his home was uninhabitable but he would not leave; it also said an IMCA had been appointed to help ensure his voice was heard.
The Council said it held a best interests meeting with him and an advocate on 31 October 2024, but only minimal notes existed recording that he lacked capacity about accommodation and care and support needs, that he was given a further month to declutter his home, and that the Council would consider a Court of Protection referral. On 5 December 2024, officers attempted a further home visit to check progress but could not gain access.
In its responses to the Ombudsman, the Council stated that he currently had no care package because he kept refusing commissioned care, that he no longer had an appointed IMCA, and that he still wanted his direct payments reinstated even though, in the Council’s view, those payments had not been used to meet his care and support needs.
What was found
The Ombudsman found the Council at fault for poor records, slow and drifting responses to serious concerns about his living conditions, and for ending his direct payments and arranging alternatives in a way that caused avoidable distress and uncertainty. The Council accepted it was at fault and would apologise, reassess his current care and support needs and produce a clear, documented plan to meet them.
The poor practice included incomplete record‑keeping, including missing minutes of a key multi‑agency meeting, lack of records on a proposed financial appointeeship, unclear timing and approach to mental incapacity assessments, and sparse best‑interests notes, all of which undermined transparency and accountability.
The Council was also at fault for allowing known concerns about his unsafe home environment and unmet care needs to drift from mid‑2023 to March 2024 without decisive action to reassess and plan support.
The Council did not follow Care Act statutory guidance when ending his direct payments: it did not evidence any exploration of adjustments to keep the arrangement going, did not clearly consult or give notice, did not review needs before stopping payments, and did not ensure an alternative package was ready, creating a gap of about two‑and‑a‑half months between stopping direct payments and having commissioned care practically available. Although the Ombudsman accepted he would probably still have refused domiciliary care, this handling caused avoidable uncertainty and frustration and so amounted to injustice.
The Council then adopted contradictory positions about his capacity, treating his refusal of care as valid, at the same time as recording that he lacked capacity to decide about care and accommodation, and it allowed matters to drift again after raising capacity concerns, leaving him without care, without an IMCA, and with unresolved risks around his wellbeing and living conditions over several months. This prolonged lack of a clear, best‑interests‑based plan and properly documented decision‑making caused him significant distress and ongoing uncertainty about how his needs would be met.
The Ombudsman concluded there was fault causing injustice, but did not recommend financial compensation, instead requiring the Council to apologise in writing, urgently reassess his current care and support needs with appropriate representation, and produce and share a clear, fully recorded care and support plan that meets his identified needs, providing evidence of these actions to the Ombudsman. The Council was required to ensure its reassessment properly documented his best interests and the agreed plan for future support.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The handling of this case illustrates how poor records, drift on safeguarding concerns and confused use of mental capacity processes and disregard of Care Act Guidance based on public law, plus Advocacy duties can leave a person at serious risk, even where agencies are in regular contact. Community care law emphasises that adult social care bodies must be able to show a clear, rational chain of assessment, eligibility decision and planning under the Care Act 2014 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
In public law terms, once a council knows of significant risks to a person’s safety at home, the duty to keep care plans under review and to carry out proportionate re‑assessment is engaged, and delay can amount to unlawful failure to act.
Community care case law on reviews and revisions stresses that councils cannot let cases drift for months where there is obvious change in circumstances, especially around deterioration, safeguarding, or loss of informal support.
Ending or suspending direct payments
In this report, the Ombudsman rightly criticises the lack of evidence that the council considered adjustments to keep direct payments viable, but the legal analysis of what had to happen before suspending them is relatively thin. Community care law materials explain that stopping a care package or terminating a contract before a lawful re‑assessment and revision process under section 27 is completed is not lawful. Changes to the way needs are met (for example moving from direct payments to commissioned care) inevitably “affect the plan” and therefore require at least some re‑assessment and explicit reasons – and a new care plan.
The Ombudsman notes failure to follow statutory guidance when stopping direct payments, but does not explicitly link this to the Care Act’s structure around personal budgets and sufficiency. Neither does the report deal with the Council’s legal right to terminate – its duty, even, if it ceases to feel that Direct Payments are an appropriate way to meet needs. There is no discussion of whether attempts to meet the ‘informal carers’ who were taking the money, had been explored. The idea that the two friends weren’t doing anything, because the place was still a mess, is ironic and blinkered: they were the people to work with, unless they were exploiting him, and just living off of the direct payment, or taking it as repayment of a debt, for goodness knows what.
The Ombudsman accepts that there was a gap of around two‑and‑a‑half months between stopping direct payments and having commissioned care practically available, describing this as poor practice and a source of injustice, but again does not fully explore the legal position on urgent needs. Other reports indicate that it deserves to be called out, as pure system failure. A court would call it breach of duty, unless the man capacitatedly refused the services.
Best‑interests decision‑making is not a label but a structured process requiring consultation, weighing of options and recording of reasons, and only after a person has been found to lack capacity in an issue specific way; in public law terms, sparse or non‑existent notes make it very hard to show that the statutory checklist has been followed. Capacity status should not be switched back and forth in a way that suits the authority’s operational needs; treating someone as capacitous when refusing to accept services, but as lacking capacity when their refusal to engage is inconvenient, risks being characterised as an abuse of public law powers.
The report does not address the principle that duties related to Direct Payments, and even the duty to meet need, can be regarded as discharged by a person’s intransigence and refusal to engage.
If it is capacitated, it has always been possible to say to a person that their behaviour is tantamount to a refusal of services, which discharges the duty. The all-important caveat, of course, is ‘if it is capacitated’ and it is familiar to all local authority staff that hoarding and being vulnerable to exploitation is not often completely capacitated, most of it stemming from prior trauma – and the exploitation from unforeseen coercive relationships.
This man’s combination of mental and physical needs would not have sustained a finding of capacity, and therefore he could not have been treated as refusing a service. Someone needed to get legal advice about what could be done: the reports are replete with examples of people who pass many explorations of capacity regarding engagement before their self-harm injures or kills them, and then the coroner looks at the records with a beady eye, and says ‘come off of it – it was always glaringly obvious’.
There is a limit to what a local authority can do, but it is an error of law to think that someone’s apparent refusal of services is always a sufficient justification for walking away: it makes the duty to meet needs, if incapacitated, (and we include here, uninformed as the consequences of refusal of the service) all the stronger.
Everyone understands in social work that hoarding requires the two things in short supply in the 2020s – a grasp of the legal framework and time – time to build up a proper relationship, which involves telling the person the legal truth, and reaching into their trauma and triggers to find a comfortable way of managing the most important aspects of their quality of life.
We’re not told whether he had a tenancy, or was a home owner; we are not told what the mental health service was doing – or not doing – to collaborate and support the Care Act assessment.
We are not told why Care Act advocacy was not involved: none of the triggers for IMCA advocacy were met, but ALL of the triggers for Care Act advocacy under s67 were. The man was not processing what was happening to him and he had substantial difficulty, even if he did not lack capacity, globally; therefore that was enough to ensure that adequate and skilled advocacy was commissioned for him – and that could really have helped, if someone from Hoarding UK had been involved.
Haringey itself gave rise to the leading case on advocacy in 2015, and how it is central to the legality of the assessment, reassessment or decision to revise the care plan.
In practical terms, this case underlines that councils need legally literate care‑planning systems: clear use of review and urgent‑needs powers, transparent decisions about ending or altering direct payments, robust capacity and best‑interests practice, timely advocacy, and care plans that are specific enough to show how eligible needs are actually being met. Community care law indicates that doing this is not just “good practice” but central to complying with the Care Act, the Mental Capacity Act and public law duties of fairness, sufficiency and respect for autonomy.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s London Borough of Haringey (24 003 205) 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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