BIRMINGHAM City Council, the UK’s biggest local authority, has been forced to review its plans to cut services to thousands of its most vulnerable citizens.
In a judgement by Mr Justice Walker today, the council has been ordered to look again at its decision to cut its adult social care budget so that only individuals with ‘critical’ needs would receive a service.
This would have meant withdrawing council-funded services from all disabled people assessed as having ‘substantial’ needs, which would include many severely disabled people.
The judge described the move to funding for critical-only policy as “potentially devastating”.
He found that, both when setting its budget and changing its eligibility policy, the council failed to give proper consideration to the impact on disabled people (as required by legislation), and failed to undertake adequate consultation on its proposals.
The issue that the council needed to address was “whether the impact on the disabled of the move to critical only was so serious that an alternative which was not so draconian should be identified and funded to the extent necessary by savings elsewhere.”
But the council failed to “ask the right questions” and councillors were not provided with the right information to be able to answer those questions.
In addition, the consultation on the proposals was flawed because essential information on the proposals was either unclear or only provided at a very late stage.
Karen Ashton, of Public Law Solicitors, said:
“In cash-strapped times such as these, the public sector must do more to avoid the consequences of cuts falling on those who are least able to bear them.
“What this case demonstrates is that this may be not only a moral obligation, but also a legal one. Local councils, and all other public authorities, must learn this lesson and learn it fast – otherwise there will be many more of these cases coming before the courts. ”
Kari Gerstheimer, Head of Legal Services, Sense, the national deafblind charity who prepared an expert witness statement for the court, said:
“This judgment sends a strong message to councils around the country that even though we are in a climate of cuts, a civilised society must never choose to cut services to disabled people who have the greatest needs.”
