Do you have a Care & Support package from Adult Social Care, or Direct Payments, or a Personal Budget, or an Individual Budget? Do you pay a Contribution towards it? Do you have a mortgage?
If you had a Financial Assessment before the Care Act (2014) was implemented in 2015, you might have been given an allowance for the amount of Interest that was included in your Mortgage repayments. For example, if your mortgage repayment was £400 per month, then the amount of interest included in that repayment might have been £25. During the Financial Assessment an allowance would be made for this £25 as part of your Housing Costs. This meant that you would have been able to keep £25 of your own money, so that you could pay this essential Bill. However, no allowance would have been made for the remainder of your mortgage payment, i.e. the other £375. In fact it could even have been classed as disposable income, and your Contribution towards your Care & Support would have ignored this expenditure.
This changed in April 2015. In most cases the allowance for Housing Costs now includes the whole of the mortgage payment, or at least half of it if it is a joint mortgage or if you share responsibility for paying it with another person. Having this new allowance should significantly reduce the amount of your Contribution to your Care & Support package from Adult Social Care, or your Personal Budget, or your Individual Budget. If you think you are entitled to this allowance, especially if you haven’t had a Financial Assessment since April 2015, you can contact the:-
Financial Assessments and Advice Officers
Social Care Accounts Service
Sheffield City Council
1, Moorfoot
Sheffield
S1 4PL
Tel. 0114 2734440
You will need to produce annual statements from your mortgage provider for the relevant years, for example 2015-2016, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018. If you don’t have these annual statements then other proof of mortgage payments, e.g. Bank Statements, might be acceptable.
