The Nursing Home Fees Agency has accused the Department for Work and Pensions of 'denying long-term care benefits to elderly people in care'. They have said that they had seen a lot of cases where elderly people had been refused attendance allowance in cases where they had entered into a deferred loan arrangement, because staff at the Department for Work and Pensions and local social security offices did not understand their own rules.
Attendance allowance can be worth up to £62.25 per week and is payable to those who fund their own long-term care. A deferred loan arrangement is where the local authority pays for care and is then refunded from the sale of the person's home.
The Nursing Home Fees Agency have also said that only around 5% of people were using care fee payment plans, which is an annuity like arrangement, to pay for retirement care.
Our view
Most rules laid down by central government or local government bodies are extremely complex.
The only people that understand the rules are the lawyers and policy committees that wrote them, the rest of us, including benefits staff, have to muddle through as best we can.
Red tape and jargon needs to end.