Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint, brought by Mr Y, about the Council seeking payment of a backdated care contribution. There is not enough evidence of Council fault to warrant us investigating and we cannot achieve the complaint outcome sought.

The complaint

1. Mrs X lives at home with a care package of daily care visits. Mr Y is her son. He complains on her behalf that the Council:
1. is wrongly seeking payment of a backdated care contribution from Mrs X, after confirming in 2022 that she would not need to contribute to her care;
2. has continued recovery action after he lodged the complaint disputing the fees.
2. Mrs X and Mr Y want the Council to cancel the care charge debt.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating; or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(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 from Mr Y, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The Council completed the financial assessment of Mrs X in March 2022. Officers asked Mr Y for copies of her bank statements, which he provided. Based on that and other evidence available at that time, the Council confirmed Mrs X did not need to contribute to her care costs and completed their assessment.
6. In 2025 the Council says it invited Mr Y as Mrs X’s representative to have a telephone meeting about her finances. The Council says it received no reply so did a ‘light touch’ review and found Mrs X had been receiving disability benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) since 2022. The payments had started in May 2022 and been backdated to March 2022. Officers recalculated Mrs X’s care contributions, taking into account the benefits payments she had been receiving for almost three years, and determined she owed the Council a care fees debt.
7. We note Mr Y says a charity applied for on Mrs X’s behalf around about March 2022 but says it did not advise them of the outcome. But in May 2022, he and Mrs X would have been aware that Mrs X’s bank account received a significant backdated benefits payment of about eight weeks’ worth of money from the DWP. Even if they did not notice the payments immediately, Mrs X’s account would then have received regular benefit sums for many further months. These were all new payments which could not have formed part of the information provided to the Council during the financial assessment, which had ended in March 2022. It was not fault for the Council to make its financial assessment decision and end that process as it did in March 2022, because no information about the benefits payments would have been available to it at that time.
8. There is a duty on care service users receiving funded care from councils, and their financial representatives, to tell their council of changes to the care recipient’s finances. The Council says it reminded Mr Y and Mrs X of that duty in further letters. That the Council did not discover the payments until 2025 was unfortunate but was not fault. The care fee system places the responsibility on the care recipient and their representatives to advise of any financial changes. It was for Mr Y and Mrs X to tell the Council of her change in financial circumstances in May 2022, once she received benefit payments. Had they done so, the Council would have reassessed Mrs X’s finances using her new income and calculated her care contribution, so no debt would have built up. There is not enough evidence of Council fault causing the care fees debt to warrant us investigating.
9. During the complaint process, the Council contacted Mrs X to pursue the care fee debt and Mr Y raised this with us as a concern. Had Mr X asked us to, we could have asked the Council to suspend its debt recovery action while the complaint was ongoing, but we could not have ordered the Council to do so. Where councils confirm they are owed a debt, they have a duty to seek to return that money to the public purse and are entitled to act to recover it. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council in pursuing the debt to justify us investigating.
10. Mrs X and Mr Y want the Council to cancel the debt it considers she owes on her care fees account. The Council has explained why it is satisfied the debt is owed. We cannot order a council to waive a debt to it which it considers has been accrued and is outstanding. That we cannot achieve the complaint outcome Mrs X and Mr Y seek is a further reason why we will not investigate.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough evidence of Council fault to warrant us investigating; and
• we cannot achieve the complaint outcome sought.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman