Care and support

What is capital?

Capital includes land, stocks, shares, bonds, savings etc. It can also include your former home in certain circumstances.

Some capital is ignored. This includes the first £13,500 of your savings, plus the surrender value of any life insurance or annuity, some payments made to former Far-East prisoners of war, personal possessions (unless bought in order to reduce the amount of capital you have) etc. The local authority will ignore (for a maximum period of 52 weeks) lump sum payments made in consequence of any personal injury to you or your partner

When does my home count as capital and when is it ignored?

It depends on whether you are a permanent or temporary resident.

If you are a temporary resident (i.e. you intend to return home) the value of your home is not counted. This can continue for up to 52 weeks, as long as you intend to return to your home.
If you are a permanent resident, your home will be ignored for the first 12 weeks of your stay in the care home. After that it will count as your capital. It won’t count as your capital if it continues to be lived in by:

• your partner or
• a child under 16 who you are maintaining, or
• a relative who is over 60 or "incapacitated"
• your former partner (if you are estranged or divorced), if s/he is a lone parent

As well as this, ACS has discretion to ignore the value of your house if a person other than those listed above lives in your property. The kind of situation they may consider includes:

• You had a carer and they gave up their home in order to live and care for you
• You had an elderly companion and they gave up their home in order to live with you.

If you are in a home on a trial or respite basis, your home won’t count as capital unless the trial period turns into a permanent stay.

The 12 week property disregard applies to everyone who owns or has a share in a property and is going into permanent care. Anyone who is already in care and paying the fees themselves will not be entitled to the property disregard if ACS starts helping with the funding at a later stage. The only exception would be someone who has only been funding themselves for less than 12 weeks, in which case the disregard would apply for the remainder of the 12 weeks.

If my property counts as capital but I don’t have enough income or other capital to pay the care home fees, what can I do?

You can either

• put the property up for sale so that you have enough capital to pay the fees or
• enter into a ‘deferred payment agreement'

If you do neither of these, ACS may place a legal charge on your property. This means that the money paid by ACS for your care home will have to be paid back when your property is sold.

What happens if I give my money away?

If you give your capital away in order to reduce your contribution to the cost of the care home, ACS can treat you as still having the capital you gave away.

What happens if I have capital below £22,250 and not enough income to cover the homes fees?

In those circumstances, you will need help from ACS or from another source (charity, relatives etc).

ACS will normally only top up the amount you can afford to pay towards your fees to a maximum level. The next section gives the normal maximum levels for stays in care homes for the year April 2008 -2009. The rates given below are for homes within Hertfordshire. If the county council places people outside Hertfordshire they will normally pay the standard rates of the Council where the home is located.

Please note that homes may charge higher fees to people making their own arrangements directly. Homes which have higher fees than those below may ask for relatives to agree for 'top up' fees to meet the difference.