Successfully challenging local authority’s financial assessment

Mrs Stirling’s husband had needed to move into a care home and was undergoing a financial assessment by his local authority in order to calculate his contribution to his care home fees.  

When Mr Stirling lived at home with his wife, he paid a significant share of the mortgage on their jointly owned property that Mrs Stirling continued to live in. She was worried about how she would manage to pay the mortgage on her own and despite consistently asking the local authority to take this into consideration in the assessment of her husband’s finances, the local authority refused to do so. Mrs Stirling phoned the Care Rights UK adviceline for support in challenging the local authorities’ decision.  

Our adviser talked the issue through with Mrs Stirling and told her about the local authorities’ powers under the Care Act. They advised her to ask the local authority to use its discretionary power to increase her husband's personal expense allowance, to leave him with more of his own finances which he could give to his wife as his contribution towards the mortgage. As this is a discretionary power for the authority, not a duty, our adviser suggested that Mrs Stirling make it clear that though she recognised this, they should not restrict their discretion to use this power and instead fulfil her husband's wishes by enabling him to support her.  

Mrs Stirling, with the ongoing support of our adviser, drafted a written challenge to the local authority, and reported back to us some time later to say that the authority had changed its decision. She said ‘’social services have agreed my husband should contribute towards our joint mortgage. They are going to back date any overpayments I have struggled to meet towards mortgage.’’