Money management consultation

Consultation closed: 5pm, 12 March 2018

Most councils provide a money management service for customers who are not able to manage their own finances and do not have another suitable person to support them. We offer a money management service in which we act as either appointee or deputy on behalf of a person to manage their finances on a day-to-day basis. The service is only available to a person who receives social care funded by us, who either does not have the capacity to manage their financial affairs or is vulnerable to financial abuse.

Our money management team maintains a bank account and monitors income (from pensions, Department of Work and Pensions etc.) and outgoings for each customer. The team also make sure that all outgoings, like rent, are paid promptly and that the customer does not fall into arrears.

The service currently provides money management support to 160 customers. These customers include people with learning disabilities, mental health, physical disabilities and older people. The service supports customers to continue to live in the community or they may be in residential care. The service has been delivered, free of charge, by less than two full-time officers.

Whilst we have been providing this service for many years, we're not obliged to do so. We don't have a statutory duty to provide this service; it is a service we choose to provide because we recognise the importance of supporting vulnerable people to manage their finances and safeguard against any financial abuse.

Reasons for changing the service

The demand for our money management service is increasing and the cost for providing the service is also rising. The service is currently at full capacity and no longer able to take on new customers. Approximately 100 customers a year are being turned away from the service.

With an ageing population, there is an increasing demand for adult social care and therefore naturally an increase in demand for money management support.

More recently, other providers of money management services (e.g. supported living providers) have decided to stop providing this service. Given there are few other providers to choose from and they can be very expensive, more customers are turning to our money management service for help.

The cost of providing the service is also increasing. Each customer has a separate bank account and we're currently covering the cost of bank charges.

Changes in the administration process for Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payments (PIP) means the processing of these benefits is much more involved and takes more time. For example, the PIP requires appointeeship to be present at meetings. This means the time it takes to process each customer's benefits takes longer and so effectively costs us more.

Download full consultation document (PDF 875.3KB) .