Date of decision: 01 April 2026
Summary
A disabled adult lost her commissioned home care after her agency gave notice in July 2024 and the Council failed to provide timely replacement support or a properly managed transition to direct payments, leaving her without essential domestic and personal‑care hours for months and cutting her care plan down – causing avoidable distress to her and her adult daughter and young child, and even mismanaging payment for a small number of commissioned input.
What happened
In July 2024 the care agency providing 15 hours a week to Ms X (supporting personal care, domestic help and assistance with parenting) gave notice and stopped providing the commissioned service; the Council was unable to identify a replacement provider and therefore did not arrange commissioned care between August 2024 and January/February 2025.
In October 2024 the social worker informed Ms X that they had been unable to identify a care provider and they could discuss DPs. Ms X said she was overwhelmed with worry and frightened she may fail her degree course. She said her child was having to provide her with care and support and was also suffering.
Ms X asked for a DP and for her adult daughter to be employed as her personal assistant (PA), but the Council gave no written decision explaining any refusal and only a verbal indication a manager had said this would not be agreed.
Ms X complained to the Council in October 2024; the Council’s brief November email response said officers would explore direct payments, look into interim cleaning support and contact the university, but it did not signpost escalation via the LGSCO or give a substantive remedy or reasons.
Officers identified an agency to provide temporary cleaning support in November 2024, but only negotiated three hours initially and told Ms X this was interim despite her assessment indicating 15 hours; internal budget queries continued between November 2024 and January 2025, delaying resolution.
The cleaning agency did not start until mid‑January 2025 and provided six hours a week; a care agency provided five hours a week from February 2025, but records show ongoing distress calls from Ms X and no consistent social‑worker continuity while duty teams and temporary staff managed the case.
The DP team engaged in April 2025; a May 2025 care and support plan recorded a temporary split of five hours commissioned care and six hours cleaning until a PA or other provision was in place, and showed the Council’s view that the DP was on hold because Ms X had not returned signed DP terms and conditions.
In May 2025 providers raised non‑payment issues: the cleaning agency said it was not being paid and the care agency indicated the Council planned to stop using them at the end of June (although records show services continued). Ms X repeatedly queried reductions in hours and lacked clear written decisions.
Ms X continued to press for her daughter to be her PA; in June 2025 she reiterated this to a duty social worker and in July asked for face‑to‑face discussions because of her communication needs.
In August 2025 the cleaning agency suspended services because the Council had not paid invoices from March to July; Ms X rang a council officer in tears and complained to the Ombudsman at the end of August 2025. Records indicate a roughly four‑week period from end July to end August 2025 when Ms X had no cleaning support while the Council resolved payment failures.
What was found
The Ombudsman found the Council at fault for failing to meet Ms X’s eligible needs between August 2024 and January/February 2025 by not arranging replacement commissioned care promptly after the provider gave notice, causing avoidable distress and a loss of a service to which she was legally entitled.
The Ombudsman required an apology, two payments totalling £2,000 and a face‑to‑face review with written decisions about hours and use of her daughter as a personal assistant.
There should have been a smooth streamlined process of moving Ms X from commissioned care to DPs. The Council mishandled the transition to direct payments: it reduced agreed hours (from 15 to a draft 11) without taking all reasonable steps to reach agreement before implementing changes. This was not in line with Care Act 2014. [The report refers in error to Care Act s24(7) but the relevant section is actually s25(5)]. This was fault causing avoidable distress – it did not give a written decision explaining whether Ms X could employ her daughter as a PA or the legal reasons for any refusal, and left Ms X in administrative limbo while paperwork remained unsigned — all of which the Ombudsman treated as fault causing frustration and distress.
Administrative failure to pay provider invoices meant the cleaning agency suspended support for about four weeks in mid‑2025, which the Ombudsman found was poor administration that caused further avoidable distress.
Complaint handling was described as ‘woefully’ inadequate, too: initial and subsequent complaint responses were superficial, failed to address key issues, did not signpost her to the LGSCO, and missed opportunities to remedy injustice; the Ombudsman found this poor practice and awarded an additional remedy for time and trouble.
The Ombudsman required the Council to apologise and pay Ms X £1,500 for loss of care and domestic support and £500 for poor complaint handling, to complete a face‑to‑face review within two months addressing the reduction in hours and the request for her daughter to be PA, and to issue clear written decisions on those points; the Ombudsman did not recommend further training because the Council had already agreed complaint‑handling training in a separate matter.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The report sets out the relevant sections of the Care and Support Statutory Guidance on direct payments and the Council’s failings in this area. The report also sets out the law and guidance on reviews of care and support plans. They are the most basic public law points: the duty to meet need, the duty to provide that which is on the care plan pending a lawful reassessment, and the irrelevance of resource difficulties with regard to the discharge of these duties!
The decision illustrates that councils remain substantively responsible for meeting eligible needs when a commissioned provider gives notice; they cannot lawfully allow a gap of several months without replacement support or an equivalent arrangement, particularly where needs relate to core personal care, domestic routines and parenting support. The factual scenario here shows a move towards direct payments being used as a substitute for commissioned provision without the necessary continuity planning, and the Ombudsman’s analysis focuses on delay, uncertainty and poor communication rather than the underlying statutory tests on assessment, eligibility and care planning.
The Ombudsman’s treatment of the employing of a close relative does not even set out whether the adult daughter was living in the same household or not!
What we can’t understand is why the Ombudsman does not enquire as to how such basic errors of legal understanding can have become part of practice?
The Ombudsman’s service always says that it does not “need to show any blame, intent, flawed policy or process, or bad faith by an organisation to say service failure (fault) has occurred.” – but when the fault is egregious, it seems to us to be missing an opportunity to make a point that other councils could learn from.
The report refers to the LGSCO’s Principles of Good Administrative Practice which do not appear to have been followed in this case for example the requirement to deal with people helpfully, promptly and sensitively.
On the duty to meet eligible needs, the facts show that Ms X had an existing package of 15 hours a week which was already accepted by the Council as necessary to meet her eligible needs, including parenting support, and that this package simply fell away when the provider withdrew. The Ombudsman criticises delay and fault but does not fully anchor this in the underlying legal position that once the authority has determined that needs are eligible and has decided on a level of provision, it is under a continuing duty to secure services sufficient to meet those needs and cannot lawfully rely on provider failure or market problems as a justification for doing nothing for several months.
From a community care law perspective, this engages the core statutory test that requires councils to ensure that eligible needs are actually met in practice, not merely acknowledged on paper, and to act with reasonable expedition where services collapse; it also raises a public law concern about the improper use of resource or commissioning difficulties as a seemingly reasonable defence to non‑compliance with a duty framed in mandatory terms.
However, the relatively high award for the aggravation was explained thus: “I have taken into account the hours of care and support in the care package, the stress to Ms X and her child, the frequent attempts she made at resolving the issue and her contemporaneous statements expressing high anxiety. The lack of care placed Ms X and her daughter at risk of harm.”
Secondly, the handling of reductions in hours and the partial substitution of cleaning for care raises a distinct legal issue about lawful care planning and revision of support.
The Ombudsman rightly notes that the Council moved from 15 hours to a draft 11, and then to a temporary split between commissioned care and cleaning, without clear written decisions or transparent reasoning, but the report does not squarely address the legal requirement that any reduction in support must be preceded by a proper review or reassessment that considers all domains of need, the impact on wellbeing and outcomes, and the risk of deterioration or carer strain. In community care law, case law and guidance place emphasis on evidence‑based planning, reasons, and involvement of the person in any proposed change; in this scenario, the absence of documented analysis of how parenting support and personal care would be maintained, and the lack of a clearly recorded professional judgement about the impact of reduced hours, indicate a potential breach of those planning duties that extends beyond mere maladministration. The report could have been strengthened by explicitly identifying this as a failure to undertake a lawful review and to justify a cut or reconfiguration of provision, under s27 Care Act, rather than purely as “poor communication”.
Thirdly, the transition to direct payments and the handling of Ms X’s request to employ her adult daughter as a personal assistant raises a discrete legal issue about the proper exercise of the direct payments discretion and the need for clear, cogent reasons where family employment is refused.
The Ombudsman highlights that Ms X received only a verbal message that a manager would not agree to her daughter being her PA, with no written decision or explanation, but the legal implications are under‑developed: in community care law terms, a decision that something won’t be allowed for a direct payment user needs to be properly informed by the relevant regulations and guidance, applied to the person’s circumstances, and supported by reasons that address both risks and benefits. Public law principles require councils to avoid blanket policies against employing relatives – the rules apply the ban only to those living in the same household, and if no exceptions based on necessity are ever made, it looks like the discretion has become fettered. The nuance around ‘necessity’ is there for a reason, so a council must give reasons showing that the individual’s preferences and outcomes have been taken into account and yet not found sufficient to trigger the concession. Even though we don’t know for sure that she was even living in the same household, inability to commission the care that was needed would seem to us to be the paradigm example of ‘necessity’, even assuming that she was living with her mother.
More generally, the way Ms X’s daughter was effectively drawn into an unpaid carer role when formal services fell away engages a further dimension of the same legal issue: once a relative is plainly providing regular, necessary care because commissioned services have ceased, there is a risk that the council is indirectly relying on informal care without having properly addressed whether this is appropriate, sustainable or consistent with the daughter’s own rights and circumstances. The Ombudsman’s analysis emphasises distress and inconvenience but does not frame this as a question about whether the authority has, in effect, shifted responsibility onto an unpaid family carer without the safeguards associated with a clear decision on care planning or direct payments. Community care law emphasises that councils must not allow family members to become de facto permanent substitutes for arranged care simply because the market has failed or commissioning has stalled, and that any such reliance must be the subject of an explicit, reasoned decision within the care planning framework.
We also note Ms X’s concern that her younger child was having to provide care and was suffering. We think this ought to have sent alarm bells to the social worker, since the child had apparently become a young carer. The Children and Families Act 2014 mandates that local authorities assess the needs of young carers and provide appropriate support to prevent them from taking on excessive or inappropriate care responsibilities. The report does not touch on this seemingly relevant point.
Some of the difficulties in this case seem to have arisen because Ms X’s regular social worker was on long-term leave and her case was managed by the duty team, and then by a temporary worker. The Ombudsman could have highlighted that Section 6 of the Local Authorities and Social Services Act 1970 imposes a duty on members to ensure that Social Services departments have sufficient staff for the discharge of their adult social services functions.
Finally, while the report rightly criticises complaint handling and administrative failures around invoice payments, it does not fully connect those administrative problems to the underlying legal duties to maintain service continuity and to keep care plans under review where there are signs that the plan is not being delivered. The four‑week suspension of cleaning because invoices had not been paid, against a background of repeated distress calls and intermittent staffing, illustrates how poor financial administration can trigger a reduction in care without any formal decision; in public law terms, this is problematic because it allows substantive changes in provision to occur outside the structured processes for review, revision or reassessment. Community care law would suggest that where an authority knows or ought reasonably to know that service delivery or payment has been interrupted or reduced, it is one step away from having to look into its own practice by way of safeguarding, and needs to sort out its commissioning or finance issue as a priority!
Several practical lessons emerge from this report. Councils should treat provider withdrawal as an immediate trigger to consider interim arrangements, including short‑term commissioned support or fast‑tracked direct payments, so that there is no gap in meeting eligible needs. Any proposed reduction in hours or substitution of cleaning for care should be grounded in a documented review that addresses all relevant domains of need, the person’s outcomes and wellbeing, and the impact on any family member who is already providing essential support. Decisions about employing relatives as personal assistants under direct payments must be reached through a transparent, reasons‑based process that recognises the person’s preferences, the realities of the local market and the safeguards needed where family care is central to the package, rather than being left in informal “manager says no” territory.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Norfolk County Council (25 010 529) 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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