Fight for Nursing Home Fees Goes to High Court (Wales)

Fight for nursing home fees goes to High Court
Apr 4 2008

by Robin Turner, Western Mail

THE Government could be forced to return hundreds of millions of pounds charged for nursing home fees if two High Court test cases involving Welsh pensioners are successful.
Lawyers for the pensioners are arguing that care in nursing homes should have been given free of charge.
Often, pensioners or others going into care have to sell their homes, use their life savings or rely on money from relatives to pay fees.
Currently, only those who are extremely ill, or have little or no savings, receive free care.
Now, in a group action, around 400 individuals are suing various health authorities across Britain for their money back.
The group action is being led by Cardiff-based Hugh James Solicitors.

The Welsh law firm is also behind the two test cases being brought on behalf of relatives of the late Marjorie Eyton-Jones of North Wales and Evan Jones of the Swansea Valley.


The cases raise in stark form the burning issue over where the dividing line lies between means-tested “social care”, for which local authorities levy charges, and “continuing health care”, which must be provided “free to all” on the NHS.

At the preliminary hearing Mr Weir told Mr Justice Eady that hundreds of elderly people should have been assessed as so frail and mentally unwell they were entitled to free NHS health care.
Outside court, lawyers confirmed that, if the case eventually succeeds, thousands more care home residents would be entitled to a repayment of fees they have already run up.
However the various primary care trusts involved insisted at the hearing that the claims have wrongly been brought in the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court, and should instead be decided by “judicial review”, effectively a different High Court jurisdiction.



Abridged
SOURCE: icWales
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