Barking & Dagenham found at fault for an unlawful reduction of care hours and failure to disregard disability‑related expenditure

Leave a Comment / Care Planning, Budgets and Choice Rights, Care Plans and Cuts LGO, Carer LGO, Charging and financial assessment, Charging LGO, Failings to Assess, Reassess, Review LGO, Intro to Ombudsman reports RE care planning, and personal budgets, Intro to Ombudsman reports RE charging and financial assessment, Intro to Ombudsman reports RE Failings to Assess, Reassess, Review, Intro to Ombudsman reports RE the position of informal carers, Reviews and Revisions (cuts or changes to content), The rights of carers, in relation to health and social care services and support / By Aidan Miller
Date of decision: 09 January 2026

Summary
A father complained on behalf of his adult son that the Council wrongly reduced the son’s funded care package from 35 to 20 hours weekly without adequate explanation and failed to treat privately arranged weekend care as a disability-related expense, leading to unaffordable contributions. The Council also delayed a reconsideration of its care planning and budget stance by nearly a year while pursuing debt recovery.

What happened
Mr X moved to Barking & Dagenham Council’s area with his disabled son, Mr Y. His previous council had provided 35 hours of funded care from Monday to Friday, plus a personal budget for privately arranged weekend care. The Council reduced Mr Y’s care package to 20 hours per week, prompting Mr X’s disagreement; the Council later increased it to 30 hours per week, but provided no formal written explanation for the reduction or the calculation method.

The Council refused to disregard the private weekend care costs as a disability-related expense during the financial assessment, deeming it a personal choice rather than a necessity, which resulted in higher client contributions and an increasing debt on Mr Y’s account. In fact, the Council said 35 hours per week was not agreed because there was ‘an expectation on the parents to provide some care support’ as they lived with Mr Y.

In September 2024, Mr X complained to the Council and challenged the decision at the end of November 2024, but the Council took nearly a year to issue a review outcome while continuing the recovery process on supposedly overdue payments.

During the Ombudsman’s investigation, the Council acknowledged some faults, including the need to offset the disregarded weekend care monies against the debt and to pay £1000 for the revision delay.

What was found
The Council was at fault in reducing supported hours without a required carer’s assessment to evaluate the parents’ ability and willingness to provide care, breaching Care Act 2014 duties and statutory guidance on carer assessments, and by failing to explain its decision-making, leaving the family confused and distressed.

It wrongly excluded privately arranged weekend care as a disability-related expense for financial assessment purposes and omitted to mention it in the care plan or fund it via the personal budget without justification, causing Mr Y additional care costs, unsustainable contributions, and account debt; the Council later conceded this fault.

The Council was required to apologise, offset debt with the putative disability expense amount (with a breakdown provided), pay £1000 to Mr X for the delay and distress, and review Mr Y’s care plan properly with a clear calculation of hours appropriate to assessed unmet need.

Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public

The Ombudsman’s analysis does not explicitly address key public law principles:

– regarding continuity of care when one moves from one area to another of one’s own volition (sections 37 and 38 of the Care Act),
– requiring councils to evidence the informal carer’s willingness and ability before reducing the underlying person’s care package, as confirmed in community care case law going back to Killigrew (Birmingham), CP (North East Lincolnshire) and P (Croydon) – all of which held that councils cannot assume family input without a proper evidence basis for thinking that both of those elements are present.
– that would characterise a nearly year-long reconsideration delay in revising the plan, as failing to meet public law expectations of timely review and decision-making under s27 of the Care Act 2014.
Continuity of Care provisions in the Care Act insist that if one council informs another of a self-initiated move of a person known to the ASC team in the original area, then the new area is bound from day one, to meet the needs of the person using the previous care plan and assessment as a rough guide to the needs, pending its own re-assessment. We can’t tell whether this had happened in Barking & Dagenham, before it then reduced the hours on the basis of its own assessment, or whether it ignored the prior plan completely. The report lacks any indication that the investigator knew of those provisions, which require written reasons for departing from the original Care Act paperwork.

Case law such as P (Croydon) and Ali Raja, (Redbridge) also illustrates that councils must not assume family members ‘can’ meet needs just because they have been left to do so, without forming an evidence based view on their real willingness and real ability, and that councils must ensure adequate interim support while decisions are pending.

The report teeters on the brink of giving the impression that a carer’s assessment is the only means to conclude that the person is actually unwilling to care, even if they are making it very clear but refusing a carer’s assessment – which is a ridiculous thing to suggest, we have to say. The carer is not obliged to undergo a carer’s assessment, and their decision on accessing that process right, is not the determinant of their willingness to provide free care.

Councils should proactively audit similar reductions for evidence of carers’ input, ensure budgets distinguish between commissioned or funded care and informal contributions, explicitly, and fast-track management reviews with pauses on debt recovery; families should challenge via formal complaints or a letter to the Monitoring Officer to avert apparently mounting debt and ‘responsibilities’.