Facts: SL was a failed asylum-seeker with fresh representations who suffered from PTSD and depression. He was independent in self-care skills and had no cognitive difficulties but required practical assistance in arranging activities during the day and regular monitoring of his mental state (with general advice and encouragement), not normally at his home. Westminster concluded that SL did not require ‘care and attention’ for the purposes of section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948.

Judgment: the Supreme Court (Neuberger, Hale, Mance, Kerr and Carnwath JJSC) agreed with Westminster:

1) The meaning of ‘care and attention’ has been subject to authoritative guidance by Baroness Hale, with helpful elaboration by Lord Neuberger, in R (M) v Slough Borough Council1[2008] UKHL 52, (2008) 11 CCLR 733. and the ordinary meaning of the statutory words does not support a more restrictive approach of limiting it to personal care or services of a ‘close and intimate nature’. What is involved in ‘care and attention’ must take its colour from its association with the duty to provide residential accommodation. It cannot be confined to that species of care and attention that can only be delivered in residential accommodation of a specialised kind but something well beyond mere monitoring of an individual’s condition is required.

2) (Obiter) Assuming that L’s needs did amount to a need for ‘care and attention’, the care and attention was available otherwise than by the provision of accommodation under National Assistance Act 1948 s21. The services provided by the Council were in no sense accommodation-related. They were entirely independent of his actual accommodation, however provided, or his need for it. The Court of Appeal was wrong in concluding that ‘available ‘means not merely available in fact but as implying also a requirement for care and attention to be ‘reasonably practicable and efficacious’. Moreover, the need for accommodation cannot in itself constitute a need for care and attention. The care and attention has to be accommodation-related which means that it has at least to be care and attention of a sort which is normally provide in the home (whether ordinary or specialised) or will be effectively useless if the claimant has no home. On this part of section 21, the Court of Appeal in R (Mani) v Lambeth LBC2[2003] EWCA Civ 836, (2003) 6 CCLR 376.and R (O) v Barking and Dagenham LBC3[2010] EWCA Civ 1101, (2010) 13 CCLR 591. erred in concluding that if an applicant’s need for care and attention is to any extent made more acute by circumstances other than the lack of accommodation and funds, he qualifies for assistance under section 21(1)(a).