11.60R (Beeson) v Dorset CC [2001] EWHC 981 (Admin), (2002) 5 CCLR 5, QBD
The test was a subjective one: did the applicant ‘deliberately’ deprive themselves of assets, ‘knowing’ that that they might receive care services for which they might have to pay?
Facts: Mr Beeson transferred his house to his son by deed of gift about two and a half years before he entered residential care. The son claimed that, at the time, his father was preparing to die at home, was unaware that he might go into residential accommodation and be means-tested and that his main motivation was to ensure that the son had a home. However, Dorset concluded that the father had deprived himself of capital for the purpose of decreasing the amount that he may be liable to pay for residential accommodation, in breach of regulation 25 of the National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Regulations 1992.
Judgment: Richards J held that Dorset had been entitled to draw inferences and reject the son’s evidence but it did not give any reasons for rejecting the son’s evidence which, if accepted, took the case outside regulation 25: therefore, Dorset must have misdirected itself in law by applying an objective, rather than a subjective test:
38. The present case differs materially on its facts from Yule v South Lanarkshire Council, given the existence of evidence from Mr Beeson’s son about his and his father’s state of mind at the relevant time. This constituted input from the family of a kind that was lacking in Yule. True it is that the key question related to Mr Beeson’s own state of mind rather than his son’s state of mind and that that still had to be a matter of inference. Nonetheless his son’s evidence that funding of residential care did not come into his or his father’s thoughts and that the transfer took place at a time when his father intended to live in and ultimately to die in his home was evidence of central importance. If accepted as truthful and reliable evidence, it negatived the existence of a regulation 25 purpose on the correct, subjective test. Conversely, a finding that a regulation 25 purpose existed on the correct test required a rejection of his evidence and an adverse credibility finding. The surrounding circumstances provided material capable of supporting the rejection of his evidence, but any decision whether to reject or accept it required an overall assessment of that material and of the impression created by Mr Beeson’s son himself in the course of stating his case and answering questions at the panel hearing.
39. Those considerations underlie my concerns about the panel’s decision. If the panel was truly directing itself by reference to a subjective test when it found the existence of a regulation 25 purpose, then it had to face up to the fact that it was rejecting the evidence of Mr Beeson’s son and, in order to give an adequately reasoned decision, it had to explain why it was rejecting that evidence. Yet there is nothing along those lines in the findings. It is possible that the panel thought along those lines but simply failed to state its reasons adequately. Another explanation, however, is that the absence of such reasons betokens a failure on the part of the panel to apply the correct test in the first place: the panel did not spell out the key steps in the reasoning process because it did not appreciate the true nature of the test or, therefore, the reasoning process that was required in the circumstances of the case. In view of the matters to which I have already referred, I consider the latter explanation to be the more likely and I conclude that the panel did not direct itself correctly.
40. In my judgment that failure infects the final stage 3 decision by the Director, whose decision letter refers to the panel’s finding and expresses concurrence with it. It seems to me that the panel’s finding must have carried substantial weight. Indeed it would make a nonsense of the panel’s role if it did not carry weight, unless of course it was appreciated that the panel had failed to apply the correct legal test. Although the Director had read the case file and correspondence, there is nothing in the letter to indicate any awareness of a problem in the panel’s own decision-making process or the carrying out of a fresh analysis without regard to the panel’s finding. In any event, if the panel’s finding was flawed, I doubt whether the Director could have cured it by a paper exercise alone and without at least hearing oral submissions from Mr Beeson’s son.