Council funding for home care and the £23,250 line

Passing the needs assessment does not by itself produce any money. It means the council has a legal duty to meet the needs it has recorded, and the financial assessment then decides how much of the cost of meeting them your relative pays. Council funding sits alongside the other funding care routes: NHS Continuing Healthcare, benefits such as Attendance Allowance, and paying for care yourselves. How to get local authority funding for care in your own home goes through both assessments in full, including how to ask for one, what happens during it, and what to do if the council is slow. This page concentrates on the part families ask about most, which is the money: what the thresholds mean, what is protected, and what tends to catch people out.

These two limits, £14,250 and £23,250 in 2026/27, apply in England and change only when the government uprates them, so it is worth checking the current figures with the council rather than relying on an old letter or a page that has not been updated. Only your relative's own savings and income are assessed, never a partner's, and the figures above are for one person. The rules in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different again, and in two of the three nations personal care at home can cost nothing at all.

Knowing which band your relative sits in also helps with budgeting privately for the shortfall or the whole bill. If night-time visits are what is needed, our night-time carer costs guide sets out what sleeping and waking nights cost to arrange. If the level of need points towards a live-in carer instead, our guide to the cost of live-in care does the same for that option.

Deliberately giving money away, or spending it, in order to bring savings under a threshold is treated by the council as if the money were still there. This is called deprivation of capital, and a council can look back years to apply it. If your relative is thinking about gifting money or transferring the house, get independent advice from a solicitor who works in this area before doing it, not after the council has already asked where twenty thousand pounds went.

The reason the property rule matters so much is what happens once a home is sold. Selling it turns a value that was never counted into cash that is, so a relative who was comfortably below £23,250 while living in their own home can find themselves well above it the moment a sale completes, even though nothing else about their finances has changed. From that point they are self-funding, and stay so until the money has been spent back down past the upper limit. That is not a reason to avoid a care home where one is the better answer for your relative. It is a reason to make sure the choice is made on need, and on what your relative wants, rather than on which route happens to be simpler to arrange.

Attendance Allowance and Carer's Allowance sit outside everything described on this page, because they are separate benefits paid whatever your relative or you have saved. Between them they can be worth several thousand pounds a year, and neither depends on savings at all.

Ring adult social care well before savings reach £23,250, say that your relative has been self-funding, and ask for a financial assessment. If a needs assessment was done previously, mention it; only the financial side usually needs repeating. There is no rule that says you have to wait until the money has run out before asking, and the council cannot insist on it either.

1. 1

   Find the right council

   A few minutes

   Adult social care sits with the county or unitary council where your relative lives, not the district council. Search the council's name with "adult social care", or use gov.uk's online locator.
2. 2

   Ask for a care needs assessment

   The same call

   Say who it is for, what has changed recently, and whether it is urgent. Being clear that money comes later, once eligible needs are recorded, stops the call being sidetracked by savings questions the assessor should not be asking yet.
3. 3

   Ask what happens next, in writing

   Before you hang up

   A timescale for the assessment, whether a carer's assessment is available for you too, and whether care can start before the assessment finishes if things cannot wait. Ask for the answer in writing.
4. 4

   Look at private options in parallel

   Optional, and free to look at

   There is no rule against arranging a carer privately while the council's process runs. Many families do both, and a private arrangement can continue, or fold into a direct payment later, once the assessments are done.