Case over local authority payments to disabled man heads to Supreme Court

A case over the payments to be made by a county council to a severely disabled man is to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

A panel of three judges agreed earlier this month to grant the claimant permission to appeal. The local authority involved, Cambridgeshire County Council, successfully defended the case in the Court of Appeal in June.

The case of KM, R (on the application of) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2011] EWCA Civ 682 (09 June 2011) concerns a 26-year-old man (KM) with a range of serious physical and mental disabilities. He was born with no eyes or optic nerves, has learning difficulties and an autistic spectrum disorder and other medical problems.

Despite this, he has musical and linguistic qualifications but needs significant support in feeding and self care and a guide outside his home. Cambridgeshire assessed the direct payment required to provide for his assessed needs as £84,678 a year, which his mother argued was insufficient and had been irrationally arrived at.

Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Sir Anthony May, President of the Queen’s Bench Division, said the judges had “some general sympathy with the submission that Cambridgeshire did not give adequate reasons, since the process by which they eventually arrived at an intelligible explanation of the £84,678 was…tortuous”.

He added: “There was however an intelligible eventual explanation in the letter of 3 June 2010, which was before proceedings were started. The question for us is whether that explanation was sufficient, coherent and rational and whether in the result it demonstrated that the £84,678 met the statutory requirements.”

The Court of Appeal also held that the needs assessment was adequate. “There of course has to be a rational link between the needs and the assessed direct payments but, in our judgment, there does not need to be a finite absolute mathematical link,” Sir Anthony said.

One of the reasons for this, the judge said, was that local authorities “whose funds are not limitless, are both entitled and obliged to moderate the assessed needs to take account of the relative severity of all those with community care needs in their area”.

The rationality challenge failed because Cambridgeshire had not accepted that KM’s care would cost £18.10 an hour as his family claimed and it was not irrational for it to arrive at a different figure.

“In our judgment, the explanation of the £84,678 in the letter of 3 June 2010 was rational,” the judges ruled.

“It properly showed how that sum had been reached, and sufficiently demonstrated that direct payments of that assessed amount would meet KM's assessed needs. This in substance addresses the grounds of appeal and for this reason the appeal fails.”

Mark Smulian