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Nursing home funding case wins review
By: Maggie Murray
The Guardian, March 23, 2001
A 94-year-old man refused funding for his nursing home care has won the right to take his case to a judicial review, in a case with major implications for thousands of elderly people forced to sell their homes to fund residential care.
The court hearing followed Dorset county council's decision to discontinue paying residential care fees for Christopher Beeson, who had "gifted" his home to his only son, Michael, just two years before being taken into care.
The review will examine whether a council can legitimately host an appeal against its own decision to refuse to pay for nursing home care, or whether a genuinely independent appeals body should be set up.
In what is being seen by lawyers as a landmark case, Mr Beeson's legal team argued at the high court in London that he had been denied the right to a fair trial under article 6 of the Human Rights Act.
"The case is not principally about the right to be placed or looked after by a local authority but how the authority makes the decisions about your care; particularly, in this case, about who is to fund that care. At the moment there is no independent right of appeal against a decision by the local authority," said Conrad Haley, a solicitor from the Public Law Project, who is acting for Mr Beeson.
"We are arguing that the decision that was made here was in breach of our client's human rights because they don't allow him to take his case and have it reheard by an independent body."
He added: "The only tribunal available was the social services complaints panel, which is made up of two local authority
councillors, and we are saying that cannot be described as independent."
The way has now been opened for a full judicial review after the high court ruled there was an "arguable" case to answer.
Mr Beeson, who is now cared for at a residential home in Bridgwater, gave his home to his son, Michael, in April 1997. The court was told that Mr Beeson senior was concerned that his son would be homeless after the break-up of his marriage.
After Mr Beeson's health deteriorated in the spring of 1999 he was assessed by Dorset social services and found to be in need of residential care. Initially, he was funded by the local authority, but later the funding was withdrawn and an internal appeal panel upheld the decision.
The panel found there had been a "deprivation of assets for the purposes of avoiding payments for the accommodation". That finding was upheld by the council's director of social services in October last year.
A spokesperson for the council said that they did not want to comment before the outcome of the judicial review. |
