Deep doubt cast on council demands to sell homes to pay for care.

Patients who go into care in Cheshire are amongst the least likely in the country to lose their homes to cover care costs – while families in neighbouring Wirral and Staffordshire are amongst the top ten at-risk groups.

Now leading probate lawyers at SAS Daniels LLP Solicitors in Congleton are telling families in the area it has never been more important to involve experts when relatives are left with no option but to go into care.

“The issue here is the lack of consistency – in Cheshire the authorities are far less likely to force the sale of somebody’s home if they have to pay for the cost of going into care, while councils in neighbouring Wirral and Staffordshire are amongst the top ten in the country likely to ignore discretionary powers allowing them to keep their home,” said probate lawyer Helen Gowin of SAS Daniels LLP solicitors.

The league table report was compiled by the Conservative party who asked local authorities two questions under the Freedom of Information Act:

“In how many cases in the 2007-08 financial year did your local authority use discretion to disregard the value of a person’s home when deciding on the charge they should pay for their residential care?”; and “In how many cases in the 2007-08 did your local authority use discretion to agree a deferred payment arrangement for a person going into residential care whereby a charge against the value of their property is not collected until the end of the contract?”

In Cheshire the figures were 152 and 108 respectively – one of the highest in the country; Staffordshire was 0 and 3, Wirral 0 and 42 – each amongst the lowest.

“That tells us a number of things: firstly, authorities in Cheshire are far more receptive to letting people keep their homes – but we still believe there may be many, many people who are not aware of this policy,” said Helen Gowin.

“But in Staffordshire and Wirral there must surely be hundreds if not thousands of families who have been forced to sell their homes to pay for residential care, but did not need to go through the stress, trauma and cost of so doing – this is where expert advice and the input of a specialist probate lawyer is absolutely crucial.

“We suspect many families will have sold unnecessarily, and there may well be many more who are in the process who simply have to stop the process right now and at least bring a solicitor in to check their status.

“Some patients may be so ill that they should not be paying any care fees, while some families may be taking local authority guidance and pressure to sell at face value.

“The discretion can apply if a carer is living in the person’s home and had sold their own house to look after the person, or, discretion can be applied to pay the fees at the end after the person dies allowing some income to be generated from rent.”

SAS Daniels LLP solicitors has offices in Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton, Bramhall and Chester.

For more information contact Helen Gowin