Date of decision: 30 May 2026
Summary
The complaint concerned an adult man with learning disabilities, whose eligible care and support needs included 40 hours a week of funded community support to access social, recreational and leisure activities, in addition to direct payments for care at home.
When the Council switched his community support from a specialist provider to its own in‑house service, it only delivered part of the agreed hours and failed to secure provision for the remaining 22 hours over many months.
As a result, a close relative had to step in as an informal carer on top of her paid role, losing time for private and social life, while the man missed out on community activities he could not access without commissioned support.
What happened
Mr X is an adult with learning disabilities whose needs meet the national eligibility criteria for adult social care; he receives a direct payment from the Council which is used to provide care and support at home, and Ms X is paid as his personal assistant using that direct payment. In addition to this, the Council had agreed and funded 40 hours per week of community support so he could access the community for recreational, social and leisure activities; this 40‑hour funding is described in the decision as “community support”.
Before June 2024, Mr X’s community support was provided by a specialist provider commissioned by the Council. In June 2024, the Council arranged for its in‑house service to take over Mr X’s community support. In the second week of June 2024, the in‑house service began delivering 12 hours of community support per week, and from the beginning of September 2024 this increased to 18 hours per week. However, the in‑house service had no capacity to deliver the remaining 22 hours of the 40‑hour weekly community support package, leaving a substantial shortfall. Ms X told the Ombudsman she had no choice but to provide informal care to cover these remaining 22 uncommissioned hours, in addition to her paid PA role, meaning she had no time off and could not live a private and social life of her own.
Between July and December 2024, the Council compiled a spreadsheet of care providers it approached to take on the 22 hours of community support that its in‑house service could not provide. The Council informed Ms X that the providers it contacted either declined, did not respond or had no capacity. One provider offered to show Ms X round its facility, and the Council identified two other providers as suitable. Ms X asked the Council to set up a meeting with one of the providers it had identified as suitable, but this was not pursued because the provider had no drivers and the Council did not consider or explore alternative transport options. There was no evidence of further attempts to approach providers in January and February 2025.
Ms X complained to the Council about the issues she later raised with the Ombudsman, including the failure to provide all the agreed community support hours and the impact on both her and Mr X. In its complaint response, the Council said it partially upheld the complaint because there was a gap in community support provision when compared with Mr X’s current care and support plan. The Council’s response stated it would continue seeking a provider to deliver the outstanding 22 hours of community support. It also said it could explore supported living options for Mr X, while acknowledging this was not a preferred option because of the significant changes this would involve for him.
The Council further accepted there had been missed opportunities to consider Mr X’s overall support and said it was proposing a review of his care and support plan. It recognised the difficulties Ms X was facing, noting the challenge of separating her paid role as Mr X’s PA from her role as his mother and informal carer. It said it would like to undertake a holistic review of the care and support plan, taking into account its duties to meet Mr X’s eligible needs and to support informal carers such as Ms X. Unhappy with this response and the continued gap in community support, Ms X brought a complaint to the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman accepted the complaint in both Mr X’s interests and Ms X’s own right.
The Ombudsman considered evidence from Ms X and the Council, together with relevant law, policy and guidance, including the Human Rights Act and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Care Act framework on eligibility, care and support plans and reviews. The Ombudsman’s investigation timeframe was restricted to June 2024 to February 2025; June 2024 was when the community support provider changed to the Council’s in‑house service, and February 2025 was when Ms X complained to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman explained that its role does not include deciding whether a person’s human rights have been breached, which is a matter for the courts, but it can assess whether a council has had due regard to an individual’s human rights in its dealings.
In this complaint, the Ombudsman noted that councils can often show compliance with the Human Rights Act by evidencing that they have considered the impact of decisions on individuals and have processes for challenge by review or appeal. The Council’s complaint response demonstrated that it had thought about Ms X’s position and rights as an individual, acknowledged the impact of its inability to commission all community support and proposed a holistic review; the Ombudsman viewed this as a partial remedy.
What was found
The Ombudsman found the Council at fault because it has a legal duty under the Care Act to meet eligible care and support needs, and did not ensure Mr X received all of his funded community support hours between June 2024 and February 2025. Although the Council’s in‑house service provided 12 hours per week between June and August 2024, rising to 18 hours from September, this left a significant unmet portion of the agreed 40 hours per week of community support, and Mr X therefore did not receive the full service needed to access community activities. The Council made attempts to commission providers between July and December 2024, but these efforts were not successful and were not pursued with alternative transport solutions when one provider lacked drivers, and there were no attempts at all in January and February 2025, despite its ongoing duty to ensure Mr X’s eligible unmet needs were met.
This is a breach of the duty to meet need, but the Ombudsman calls this service failure, conventionally, as it is not a court.
This failure meant Ms X had to provide informal care against her wishes for the missing 22 hours, on top of her paid PA role, causing avoidable distress and loss of private and social life for her. It caused Mr X distress because he missed out on social and community activities that he could not access without commissioned support and that his relative was not in a position to provide.
The Ombudsman concluded that the Council’s stance did not fully address the injustice caused by the continuing gap in community support.
As part of the agreed actions, within one month the Council must issue a written apology to Ms X, taking account of the Ombudsman’s guidance on effective remedies. It must make a symbolic payment of £250 to Ms X to reflect the avoidable distress of providing informal care against her wishes, and a symbolic payment of £250 to Mr X to recognise that he did not receive all his community support.
Within two months, the Council must re‑contact five care providers that had recently expressed interest in providing Mr X’s community support and offer the family dates for Mr X to meet and be assessed by those providers; re‑offer an additional direct payment to be used for Mr X’s community support, either via an agency or by recruiting a personal assistant, using its personal budget support service to help manage the direct payment and, if needed, advise on recruiting a PA; and re‑offer any other available service that would meet Mr X’s community support needs.
The Council was also told to complete the review of Mr X’s care and support plan, making any necessary revisions to ensure all his eligible community care and support needs are met, and provide the Ombudsman with evidence of compliance with these actions.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Ombudsman’s decision underlines that once a person has an agreed care and support plan with funded hours for eligible needs, the council’s duty is to secure delivery of those hours in practice, not merely to commission part of them and keep looking for providers. That has been the law since 1995, so it is of concern to us that the Ombudsman does not spell that out or ask questions about the councillors’ awareness that the decision-making put the council in breach of duty.
Community care law stresses that resource constraints or market fragility do not suspend the duty to meet eligible unmet needs, and councils must consider creative or flexible commissioning options, including direct payments, alternative providers and contingency or interim planning, rather than accepting long‑term gaps in provision.
The case also illustrates how reliance on a close relative to fill gaps in care, without their free and genuine choice, risks undermining both the adult’s rights and the relative’s right to a private and family life. Under community care law and public law principles, a council cannot treat such informal care as a convenient buffer to absorb shortfalls in commissioned support, especially where this leads to exhaustion, loss of ordinary life opportunities and blurred boundaries between paid and unpaid roles.
We would wonder (loudly) how ‘considering’ Ms X’s rights as an individual reflected compliance with human rights, if all it did was note them but did nothing about them? The Council effectively relied on her as a substitute provider without a clear, lawful decision about whether she was willing and without a dedicated carers’ assessment examining the effect on her wellbeing, employment and social life. The investigator says that the commissioning attempts were not successful for reasons which were not always within the Council’s control, but what it was offering to pay would be within its control, if it knew its legal obligations.
Where a council identifies eligible needs for community participation and social contact, the support plan must translate those outcomes into concrete, reliably delivered provision, with clear monitoring and escalation when delivery falls below the agreed level. Public law requires that reviews, reassessments and market‑management steps are taken in good time where there is an ongoing pattern of unmet need, and that any discussions of major changes such as supported living are grounded in properly evidenced best‑interests and proportionality analysis rather than as an implicit response to commissioning difficulty.
Families and advocates can use decisions like this to press councils to evidence, in writing, how they have ensured that every element of an agreed care and support plan is actually in place, what steps they have taken when providers have said no, and how they have protected carers from being treated as a default replacement for missing services. Community care law provides a framework for challenging drift, delay and under‑delivery, including through complaints, pre‑action correspondence and, where necessary, judicial review, but this case shows that clear factual records and persistence in raising concerns are often crucial to getting duties acknowledged and acted on.
The investigator’s reasoning remains high‑level and does not make explicit the legal tests that flow from the Care Act framework about how an agreed plan interacts with market failure and commissioning difficulty. Community care law materials emphasise that once needs have been found eligible and included in a care and support plan, the council’s obligation is outcome‑focused and non‑delegable: it must ensure that the specified outcomes are achieved through services or other arrangements, cannot treat partial provision as sufficient, and must not allow commissioning obstacles to turn an agreed plan into an aspiration. If there is only one way to meet the need, the law is that the expense involved is not a relevant consideration.
The Ombudsman notes that there were no attempts to approach providers in January and February 2025 and that alternative transport solutions were not explored, but does not fully connect this to the public law requirement to take all reasonable steps to secure provision, revisit commissioning strategies, consider interim or emergency arrangements and keep a real‑time grip on whether actual support matches the legal entitlements set out in the plan.
In addition, the decision frames the remedy primarily as apology, modest financial redress and some concrete commissioning steps, rather than as an insistence that the Council’s systems ensure that any future gap between planned and delivered hours triggers automatic escalation and potential re‑assessment of the personal budget. £250 each is not a restitutionary remedy reflecting what the council unjustly saved, by dint of not buying the 22 hours or funding its in-house service to expand to meet the duty. If the mother had used civil proceedings, her son would have been entitled to restitution to pay for the value of her labour as in CP v NE Lincolnshire (2019) and P (Croydon) 2022.
In broader terms, this decision shows how gaps between written plans and real‑world provision can persist unless councils apply community care law tests rigorously and unless advocates press them to do so. For other families in similar situations, the main practical lessons are to obtain and keep the most recent care and support plan; log every instance where hours are not delivered; insist on a review once under‑delivery becomes a pattern; and seek a carers’ assessment where informal care has been increased, especially where it is not freely chosen. Using the language of duty to meet eligible needs, sufficiency of personal budget, and recognition of carers’ rights can help re‑frame such situations as legal problems rather than mere service difficulties.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s North Northamptonshire Council (24 019 678) 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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