Facts: NA was living in residential accommodation in Kent, funded by the NHS, until NHS funding was withdrawn and he became entitled to provision under section 21 of the National Assistance Act (NAA) 1948. Kent accepted that NA had been ordinarily resident in its area when he became entitled to provision under section 21, but disputed the Secretary of State for Health’s determination that Kent was responsible for such provision.

Judgment: the Court of Appeal (Lord Dyson MR, Tomlinson and Burnett LJJ) held that on the literal and plain meaning of section 24(5) of the NAA 1948, NA had been ordinarily resident in Kent immediately before he became entitled to provision under NAA 1948 s21, accordingly Kent was liable. It was only later that the NAA 1948 was amended so as to disregard certain periods of time spent in NHS accommodation for these purposes. If such a disregard had already been implicit in the statutory scheme, then Parliament need not have troubled to introduce it: accordingly, it had not been implicit in the statutory scheme before the scheme was expressly amended.

Comment: again, under the new statutory scheme, this case would be decided differently, in that because of the ‘third deeming provision’ (see above para 12.22), the local authority that had placed NA in Kent would continue to be responsible. Potentially, that authority might also now be regarded as continuing to be responsible under the Cornwall principle.1R (Cornwall Council) v Secretary of State for Health [2015] UKSC 46, [2015] 3 WLR 213, (2015) 18 CCLR 497.