Norfolk charging muddle

An outbreak of nasty surprises on care charges led Jonathan Toye of West Norfolk Disability Information Service to start asking questions

In April 2008 I started to get calls from disabled people in West Norfolk who had all received a bill from the county council, demanding a huge increase in care charges.

In some cases, these were people who hadn’t had to pay anything before. In one case there was a 500 per cent increase in charges.

After receiving quite a few calls I began to wonder if West Norfolk was being picked on. It appeared that assessments of charges in our part of the county had not been carried out effectively for some time and it was now catch-up time. If we wanted to question these horrendous bills we had to prove all relevant outgoings that could be taken into account. Receipts had to be shown for everything.

In one case where someone received a backdated bill for some £900, we explained that the visits he made every fortnight to an osteopath were a medical necessity: they helped relieve his discomfort and prevented him going into spasm. Social Services did not agree with this. The osteopath wrote to them, comfirming what we’d said. Still no joy. With permission, I visited his GP, explained the situation and managed to get a note written, confirming what we had been saying. Finally, after 15 months’ pressure, he then got the letter we’d been wait­ing for saying “Assessed Charge - Nil”.

In another case, a person who had been paying a manageable amount each month for her care suddenly received a five-fold increase in her charges. She had no idea why. Her circumstances hadn’t changed. She was getting backdated bills that were rapidly going into the thousands. In a panic she paid off almost £300 worth and then, fortunately, she called me.

I suggested she stopped paying while we sorted things out. This took seven months and involved a visit by me to talk to the director of Adult Social Services for Norfolk, urging him to visit this person in her home (along with a reporter from the BBC). She finally got the NIL Charge letter and was refunded the money she had paid out in a panic.

After months of pushing, two people have had their charges reduced by 75 per cent, two have had them scrapped altogether and the remaining two await a verdict.

But why do we have to go through all of this just because of what amounts to a mistake on the authority’s part?

• Jonathan Toye is the co-ordinator of WNDiS, West Norfolk Disability Information Service. He provides information, advice and advocacy services to disabled people.

Phone: 01553 774599.

Email: jt@wndis.org.uk

Website: www.wndis.org.uk