Harrow Clinical Commissioning Group v IPJ & Ors [2018] EWCOP 44

​Application by the CCG which proposed an extensive package of care for the P at the family home, with (most of) the financial arrangements managed by a third party broker. The application was  granted despite it being opposed by the P's parents.

The P's parents, who looked after him at home, were being paid almost £5,000 per week by the CCG. This money was to pay themselves as well as to fund other carers. The parents invoiced the CCG directly. The CCG wished to fund a package of care for the P which was on the same basis as he receives at present in terms of quantity of care from carers, but which also includes services directly commissioned by the CCG by way of Occupational, Speech and Behavioural therapy. They wished to provide the monies for the carers and to have care management oversight by the use of a brokerage organisation to deliver the Personal Health Budget and so made an application to the court.

The court granted the application. Mechanisms of transparency and governance are obviously reasonable expectations of the CCG, irrespective of the P's parents' personal administrative skills. It was unarguable that public funds not far short of £5,000 per week should be administered in any way other than on an open, transparent and impartial basis; and that is not the case if the P's parents both managed such funds and used a large part of it to pay themselves, without any system of oversight. It was right and proper that such expenditure should be transparent, traceable and demonstrably well-founded. The CCG's unwillingness to continue financial arrangements which were adopted as an interim response to a crisis situation was entirely understandable.

Read the full text of the judgment on Bailii