Our social services dept owns 2 community mental health resource centres which each have residential beds. They both receive supporting people grants and one gets a mental health grant. Residents do not have a social care assessment but are assessed by their care co-ordinator who may be from social services or health. Social services has a partnership with the mental health trust and staff work together in multi disciplinary teams. Residents do not sign any form of licence agreement but do receive Housing Benefit, the maximum payable is about £171 per week. This is paid direct to social services. Most are on Income Support so get the maximum HB. If there is a shortfall some residents make this up from their other income, but it isn't clear if that is always the case or what happens if they do not pay. The issue is that some get care component paid and some have it suspended on the grounds they are in certain accommodation as set out in s9 DLA regs. It seems likely that staff completing the DBD26 and DBD46 forms (reqeust for more info about nature of the accommodation) are not always consistent in what they say. But it is also clear that decision makers are making inconsistent decisions.

What are people's opinions about payability of care component? I'm trying to trace the history of the funding for the centres and see if anyone has ever actually identified what statutory authority the local authority is using to provide them but it's not proving easy.

Even if reg 9 did apply I would argue that the claimants should be exempt from that reg under reg 10(8)(b)(ii), arguing HB and any non-means tested benefit was part of the claimants own resources.

Having the SSD as owners of the property makes it a bit trickier - does open the possibility that the accommodation is being provided under Pt.III NAA so that 9(1)(a) applies, even though HB is in payment, normally a marker that this is not 'certain accommodation'. One counter argument to Reg.9(1)(a) applying is that if this were Part III accommodation the SSD would have to charge the full cost to the resident under S.22 NAA. If the SSD were making Fairer Charging charges on the care package, this would be another counter-indication. Problem is I don't know if the SSD have any powers other that Part III to actually provide accommodation - although the LA as a whole does of course. Could say the SSD as property owners are simply discharging the LA's corporate housing duties. Or use 10(8)as nevip says.

Richard Atkinson

A few years I had a similar situation. From memory you might find it useful to have a look at the following decisions - CDLA/5106/2001; CDLA/2127/2000 and CA/2985/1997.