Luton council set to write off more than £450k in historic adult social care debt

A report covering individual debt of more than £10,000 for write-off between 2010 and 2024, totalling £455,783, was presented to the local authority’s scrutiny finance review group.

Adult social care debt is hard to recover because of the nature of the client, how the debt was raised and the ability to pay, according to this report. LBC’s adult social care debt recovery team deals with all debts from 50 days old, it said.

“Service users would have received an invoice and two reminder invoices from accounts before this team’s involvement. Only after this process has been completed will the debts be considered for write-off.

“All the debts are more than £10,000 and those of deceased clients who’ve no assets available in their estates for payment of the outstanding amount or are statute barred or uneconomical to pursue. No debt is less than a year old.

“Most of the debts for write-off accrued before the debt recovery team was established in January 2019. A backlog of debt had been growing older over time before that date.

“This has made the debt difficult to collect and more likely to be written off. In many cases, the service has prevented the debt accruing further by taking over their finances prior to death, but have been unable to recover the sum owed because of a lack of funds.

“Arrangements were made in some cases to pay the ongoing charges, but the service user had no assets to pay the arrears. The team has worked extremely hard since it has been in place collecting debt and has exceeded targets year-on-year.

“All processes and procedures to recover the debt have taken place,” added the report. “Debts which are more than six years old are classed as ‘statute barred’, which means that we’re unable to recover the sum.

“Since the team has been in place, there’s been a vast reduction in debts being put forward for write-off because of increased recovery action and more efficient processes.”

LBC’s director of adult social care Jill Britton explained: “This provides an update on write-offs of debt of more than £10,000, which we’re required to take to executive.

“This has been approved for some years. The debt recovery needed has been increasing since 2019 with the growth in adult social care and the number of people contributing to that care. So the team are looking at a business case for increased resources,to enable decisions to be made more efficiently.

“All these will have been assessed as needing to contribute to their care to some extent up to the threshold. The debt isn’t paid until they sell their home.

“Sometimes there’s not sufficient in the estate to fully pay off the debt. It’s not people who weren’t contributing. Sometimes the assets don’t meet the level of care to which they were exposed.”

The group agreed to a report back supporting a suggestion by Labour Challney councillor Tom Shaw of “a reasonable amount for debt-write-off because of the escalating costs of care and private care”.