Summary: The Council was not at fault in the way it responded to concerns about Mr X’s actions. There were concerns raised about his actions in respect of his grandmother’s (Mrs B’s) finances, health and accommodation which the Council had a duty to consider even though Mr X holds power of attorney for Mrs B.

The complaint

1. Mr X (the complainant) says the Council failed to safeguard Mrs B’s welfare in the care home, did not involve him properly in safeguarding discussions and accused him of misconduct in respect of her finances. He says the Council also prevented him from visiting her before she moved homes. Mr X says the cause of most problems was the Council’s continued failure to communicate with him.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
3. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

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What I have and have not investigated

4. I have investigated the complaints set out in paragraphs 1. I have not investigated another complaint, about the Council’s response to a safeguarding incident in 2022, as we cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council/care provider has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered evidence provided by Mr X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance. I spoke to Mr X.
6. Mr X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered their comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Relevant law and guidance

7. A council must make enquiries if it thinks a person may be at risk of abuse or neglect and has care and support needs which mean the person cannot protect themselves. An enquiry is the action taken by a council in response to a concern about abuse or neglect. An enquiry could range from a conversation with the person who is the subject of the concern, to a more formal multi-agency arrangement. A council must also decide whether it or another person or agency should take any action to protect the person from abuse. (section 42, Care Act 2014)
8. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 is the framework for acting and deciding for people who lack the mental capacity to make particular decisions for themselves. The Act (and the Code of Practice 2007) describes the steps a person should take when dealing with someone who may lack capacity to make decisions for themselves. It describes when to assess a person’s capacity to make a decision, how to do this, and how to make a decision on behalf of somebody who cannot do so.
9. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 introduced the “Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)”. This replaced the Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA). An LPA is a legal document, which allows a person (‘the donor’) to choose one or more persons to make decisions for them, when they become unable to do so themselves. The 'attorney' or ‘donee’ is the person chosen to make a decision on the donor’s behalf. Any decision has to be in the donor’s best interests. The Court of Protection may need to become involved in difficult cases or cases where there is disagreement which cannot be resolved in any other way.
10. The Care Act 2014 (section 14 and 17) provides a legal framework for charging for care and support. It enables a council to decide whether to charge a person when it is arranging to meet their care and support needs, or a carer’s support needs. The charging rules for residential care are set out in the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014 and councils should have regard to the Care and Support Statutory Guidance.
11. When the Council arranges a care home placement, it must follow the regulations when undertaking a financial assessment to decide how much a person must pay towards the cost of their residential care.
12. The financial limit, known as the ‘upper capital limit’, exists for the purposes of the financial assessment. This sets out at what point a person can get council support to meet their eligible needs. People who have over the upper capital limit must pay the full cost of their residential care home fees. Once their capital has reduced to less than the upper capital limit, they only have to pay an assessed contribution towards their fees. Where a person’s resources are below the lower capital limit they will not need to contribute to the cost of their care and support from their capital.
13. A person must also be able to choose alternative options, including a more expensive setting, where a third party or, in certain circumstances, the resident is willing and able to pay the additional cost. This is called a ‘top-up’.

What happened

14. Mrs B was resident in the care home as a self-funding resident for several years. Mr X (her grandson) has power of attorney for her finances, and for health and welfare.

The safeguarding and confidentiality complaint

15. In October 2024 Mr X said that on his visit to Mrs B on her birthday he had twice found her soiled and not cleaned up. He said the standard of care in the home had declined.
16. The social worker he contacted said she would raise the matter with her manager and also with the link officer for the home. She emailed him subsequently to let him know that she had done so.
17. Following enquiries by the link officer, she confirmed to the social worker that she had raised the issue with the home who had provided copies of case notes for the day in question showing all usual personal care had been completed. Mr X says this is an example of the Council accepting the papers from the home at face value without proper investigation.
18. Mr X complained to the Council about this incident and a possible breach of his confidentiality in February 2025. The Council responded in June 2025 with an apology for its delay. It said “In such circumstances a safeguarding referral would ordinarily be triggered to investigate the concerns, however our contracts team did ask the care home to comment regarding care provided on 10 October 2024. The home provided care logs showing that your mother’s personal care and continence needs were met throughout the day. There have been no further concerns since and our contracts monitoring team have frequent contact with the home.” It agreed however there could have been better communication with Mr X.

Safeguarding concerns 2025

19. At the end of 2024 Mrs B’s finances were nearing the upper threshold amount. A financial assessment was required by the Council to establish if Mrs B was eligible for funding. At around the same time Mrs X’s newly allocated social worker contacted Mr X as she needed to complete a Care Act assessment of Mrs B’s needs if the Council was to contribute to the funding of Mrs B’s placement.
20. The Council’s records show that Mr X was unwilling to complete the online financial assessment form as he was concerned the Council required a top-up payment which he said the family could not afford. Mr X says the Council’s records may show it contacted him but he says this was after multiple attempts on his part to contact officers.
21. In April 2025 the Council’s finance officer telephoned Mr X to discuss the date at which Mrs B’s funds were likely to depreciate. He noted that from his calculations it was likely to be 2028 before Mrs B should need assistance from the Council but it appeared there had been large transactions from her account which had depleted it. He noted that Mr X refused to say what the purpose of the large transactions was and said they had been his grandmother’s wishes. The finance officer explained the Council needed to know the detail of the transactions if the Council was to consider an application for funding but Mr X was unwilling to offer any more evidence.
22. The care home began to report to Mrs B’s social worker that Mr X was aggressive in attitude and abusive toward staff. There was an incident which prompted the care home to contact the police. Mr X has sent me audio recordings of the incident which prompted this contact as evidence that he was not abusive.
23. In addition Mrs B’s GP raised a safeguarding concern with the Council when she discovered Mr X did not intend to tell the care home that Mrs B had a breast cancer diagnosis. The Council says, “This information was essential to the planning and delivery of safe, appropriate care and treatment. The GP highlighted that withholding such clinically significant information could place (Mrs B) at risk of harm, amounting to potential neglect.” Mr X says he spoke to his grandmother’s consultant about the diagnosis and asked if it would make any difference to her care: he was told it would not. He says when he told the GP about this conversation and the reasons why he had not disclosed the information, she accepted his explanation.
24. Mr X stopped making payments to the home in November 2025, he says because of the poor standard of care. As a result the care home issued an eviction notice but the Council decided to make the payments itself to secure Mrs B’s placement until the matter was resolved in Mrs B’s best interests. The Council also reported Mr X’s actions to the Office of the Public Guardian (which oversees the actions of people with Power of Attorney) as it had concerns Mr X was not acting in Mrs B;’s best interests.
25. The Council says Mr X made little effort at first to find another care home for Mrs B despite the notice issued by the care home. On 20 January 2026 the Council received notification that the family planned to move Mrs B. On 22 January the Council made an urgent application to the Court of Protection to make a decision in Mrs B’s best interests. On 23 January the service manager was notified that Mr X wanted to move Mrs B that morning. The legal advice was that even though Mr X had power of attorney, the Council should advise the care home to prevent a move until the outcome of the urgent Court of Protection hearing was known. The service manager emailed the care home advising that the manager could legally prevent Mr X from entering the home.
26. On 25 January Mr X emailed the Council to say he had been prevented from accessing the care home that morning when he had gone to visit Mrs B.
27. The Council agreed with the care home on 26 January to put in place a three-way contract of acceptable behaviour between the Council, the care home and Mr X to ensure that he could visit Mrs B without concern. Mr X says he was not party to this discussion.
28. On 27 January Mr X spoke to the Council’s Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) officer. The DoLS officer explained that the adult care service was awaiting a decision from the Court of Protection, due to disagreement about what was in his grandmother's best interests. Mr X listed the benefits to his grandmother of moving homes. A Best Interest meeting was held on 3 February which Mr X attended. It was agreed following the meeting that it would be in Mrs B’s best interest to move to the other home, and the move was completed on 16 February.
29. On 20 February the Council responded to Mr X’s email of 25 January concerning the visiting ban. It set out the reasons why the restrictions on visiting had been imposed. It said “The restrictions on your visits were imposed to prevent (Mrs B) from being removed from her place of residence prior to involvement from the Court of Protection, and to enable a decision to be reached in (Mrs B)’s best interests, in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) Code of Practice.

Whilst you hold LPA there were concerns regarding your deployment of those duties shared with you on the 14 January 2026 which contributed to the decision making.”

30. Mr X complained to the Ombudsman about the way the Council had ignored his complaints about the standard of care in the care home and instead called into question the way he fulfilled his power of attorney duties. He complained about the Council’s poor communication with him which he said had led to most of the problems which were experienced.
31. The Council says although Mr X subsequently paid the outstanding care home fees for November 2025 to 31 January 2026, he has refused to make payment for the period 1–16 February 2026.
32. The Council says in respect of the concerns raised in October 2024, that this was not categorised as a safeguarding concern at that time, and the Council therefore relied on the care home’s contemporaneous records alongside the information gathered through enquiries.
33. In terms of the safeguarding concerns in 2025, the Council says they emerged from “several sources across financial assessment processes, a GP safeguarding referral, and multi-agency safeguarding meetings. Together, these presented a pattern of risk that required Adult Social Care to initiate enquiries under Section 42 of the Care Act 2014”. It says Adult Social Care’s actions were consistent with its statutory obligations to ensure (Mrs B)’s safety, protect her rights, and respond appropriately to the risks of financial abuse, neglect, and obstruction of professional oversight.

Analysis

34. It was not fault on the part of the Council in deciding to investigate the concerns raised in October 2024 through the care and monitoring process as it was satisfied, on the basis of the records it saw, that they did not meet the threshold for a safeguarding investigation.
35. Multiple concerns arose in 2025 which prompted the Council to take safeguarding action. Although Mr X disagreed with the approach taken by the Council, and what he considered its intrusion into the way he fulfilled his role as Mrs B’s attorney, there is no evidence the Council failed to act in accordance with its duties under the Care Act, or acted with fault in the way it decided to do so.

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Decision

36. I have completed this investigation on the basis there is no evidence of fault on the part of the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman