Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council wrongly decided his late father deprived himself of assets to avoid care home fees. There is not enough evidence of fault to justify an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council wrongly decided his father, Mr F, had deprived himself of assets to avoid care home fees.
2. He says that as a result he is being chased by the Care Home for the payment of outstanding fees which is causing him distress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Councils may consider a resident has deliberately deprived themselves of an asset, such as a property they own, in order to reduce the charges they are asked to pay. The council should consider whether deprivation has occurred, what its purpose was, and the timing of that deprivation. Having considered the facts, the council may decide to treat the resident as still owning that asset when assessing how much they should pay towards their care.
7. Mr F lived in a care home as a permanent resident from 2015. In 2016, he was awarded continuing health care (CHC) which means the NHS paid for all of his care.
8. In 2017, the family sold Mr F’s property and disposed of the assets.
9. Mr F continued to receive CHC until 2022 when the NHS decided he no longer qualified. As a result, the Council carried out a financial assessment. It decided Mr F (or his family) had deliberately deprived themselves of assets when they sold Mr F’s property. This meant that the Council was allowed to take the value of the property into account when determining whether Mr F could afford to pay for his care (this is called notional capital).
10. In its complaint response, the Council said it took the timing of the sale and whether it was reasonable to assume Mr F might need to pay for his care in the future when deciding the motivation for the sale of the property.
11. Mr X remained unhappy and complained to the Ombudsman.
12. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether you disagree with the decision the organisation made.
13. We will not investigate this complaint. That is because there is no evidence of fault in how the Council made its decision that a deprivation of assets had taken place.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman