If you are eligible for care or support from Bedford Borough Council, we will carry out a financial assessment to determine how much you will have to contribute towards the cost of your care.

If you have more than the upper capital limit of £23,250, you will have to pay the full cost of your care.

If you have less than the upper capital limit, what you pay is based on both your capital and income. We will carry out a financial assessment to work out the maximum weekly amount you need to contribute towards your care.

How much you need to contribute depends on your income and capital. This includes (but is not limited to) benefit income, private pensions, savings, bonds, shares and other money or property you own.

If you have more than the upper capital limit of £23,250, you will have to pay the full cost of your care.

If you have less than the upper capital limit, what you pay is based on both your capital and income. We will carry out a financial assessment to work out the maximum weekly amount you need to contribute towards your care.

We will ask for evidence of your income, savings and capital, and details of your expenditure.

Income can include:

• all state benefits
• occupational or private pensions
• trust income
• annuity income

Some of these items may be excluded in part or in full for the purposes of the assessment, but we need to know about them so we can calculate the assessment.

Capital can include:

• savings
• property you own, including property you own but do not live in
• bank and building society accounts
• national savings accounts
• Income Bonds
• savings certificates
• Premium Bonds
• all stocks and shares, PEPs, ISAs, etc.
• cash

Based on all of this information we calculate your contribution (we call this client contribution).

The client contribution is your assessed contribution towards the cost of your care.

You will be able to retain a weekly personal allowance and in some cases a savings credit disregard as well as the mobility element of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) or Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Your spouse or civil partner who does not reside in the same care home may retain 50% of your Annuity and pension income

How much you need to contribute depends on your income and capital – this includes (but is not limited to) benefit income, private pensions, savings, bonds, shares and other money or property you own. We can then work out how much you will have to pay towards your care.

In some cases, houses, property and land that are not your main and only residence can also be included.

When we work out how much you will have to pay, if your capital is between £14,250 and £23,250, a tariff income is included in your calculation. This is £1 a week for every £250 you have between these two amounts. Capital of £14,250 or less is ignored.

The amount we ask you to pay will be based on your own income and capital only. If you have any joint savings with your partner, we will generally count half of this as yours and include it when working out how much you have to pay.

If you have a spouse, they will be able to retain 50% of your private occupational pension(s).

There are serious implications to ‘gifting assets’ in this way, for both the person giving away the assets and the person receiving them. Where someone deliberately tries to avoid paying for care and support by reducing their assets - such as money, property or income – we call this ‘deprivation of assets’.

There are lots of different things that can count as a deprivation of assets, such as:

• giving away a lump sum of money
• suddenly spending a lot of money in a way which is unusual for your normal spending
• transferring the title deeds of your property to someone else
• putting money into a trust or tying it up in some other way
• using savings to buy possessions, such as jewellery or a car, which are not included in the financial assessment

If we determine that it is more likely than not that you have deliberately reduced your assets to avoid paying for your care, we will include the assets you no longer have in the financial assessment.

When we have worked out how much you need to pay for your care, we will send invoices to you or the person who helps you with your finances. The first bill may be a larger than usual as it will be backdated to the date you started to have the care. After that, we will send you invoices every 4 or 5 weeks.

Details of the different ways you can pay are on the invoice.

Managing money is complicated and many people will find it difficult to understand.

If you would rather that someone else helped you to manage your finances, there are several ways of doing that.

You can ask someone to be your appointee for benefit purposes. To find out about this, please contact the Department for Work and Pensions.

If you would like somebody you know to manage all of your financial affairs for you, you can ask a solicitor to set up a Lasting Power of Attorney.

If you become unable to manage your own affairs, your relative or solicitor could apply to the Court of Protection for a Deputyship Order.

Service users who are not satisfied with the calculation or outcome of their financial assessment should discuss their concern with the Financial Assessment team in the first instance to ensure that the assessment has been calculated correctly.

A Financial Assessment Officer independent of the disputed assessment will reassess the information provided by the customer at the time of the assessment.

If the service user remains dissatisfied with the assessed charge, then they are able to request a review of charges by the Senior Financial Assessment Officer. The Senior Financial Assessment Officer will review the information used by the Financial Assessment Officer and scrutinise the financial assessment against The Charging and Financial Assessment Policy.

The service user will be notified in writing of their decision and state the reasoning behind it. Should the service remain dissatisfied with the decision; they are able to complain using the Council’s complaints procedure.

It is your responsibility to notify the Financial Assessment Team of any changes in your financial circumstances, which may affect your Financial  Assessment. This includes changes in your income, savings and capital. 

If you apply for and are awarded additional benefits, your assessment will be backdated to the date of any change.

Any changes will be backdated to the date of the change regardless of when we are notified.

The customer has 14 days to return the assessment form along with the supporting evidence. If the form is not returned after 14 days, a 7-day reminder letter is sent out.

If the form is still not returned we will attempt to carry out an assessment based on the evidence we can gather, however this may not be possible and in this circumstance, we charge the customer the full cost for their care based on the cost that is charged by the care provider.

In April each year, we will automatically adjust the state benefit amounts in the financial assessment, in line with changes made by the Department for Works and Pensions. We will automatically adjust the Personal Allowance in line with The Department of Health guidance. If there are any Bedford Borough Council Charging Policy amendments, these will also be automatically adjusted where possible.

Once the assessment has been adjusted, you will be written to with your new charge. At the same time, you will be invited to tell us about any other changes that might affect the outcome of your assessment. If you do tell us about other changes, your assessment will be adjusted to reflect any change from the date the change took effect.

Anybody else will be contacted again, later in the year, to carry out an annual review assessment. You assessment will be adjusted to reflect any change from the date the change took effect.

If you own a home, are a single person, have under the capital threshold and you move to permanent residential care the value of your home will be taken into account in the financial assessment, 12 weeks after you are living there permanently.

Your property won't be included if it's still occupied by:

• your partner, former partner or civil partner unless they are estranged from you
• your estranged or divorced partner IF they are also a lone parent
• a relative who is aged 60 or over
• a relative who is disabled
• a child of yours aged under 18

After the 12 week property disregard period, your property will form part of your financial assessment and in most cases, you will be required to pay for the full cost of your care.

If your property has not been sold after the 12 week property disregard, you could enter into The Deferred Payment Scheme.

If your property is unlikely to sell by the end of the 12 week property disregard or you do not wish to sell the property in your lifetime but you do not have funds to be able to pay for your residential home, you should apply for a deferred payment agreement.

The Financial Assessment team will determine if you are eligible for a deferred payment but in general, the following criteria must apply:

• The service user or a legally appointed deputy/LPOA is able to sign the paper work
• There must adequate equity in the property
• The property must be in a good state of repair.