A recent High Court decision, R (CGT) v West Sussex County Council, has significant implications for NHS and local authority commissioners navigating the interface between personal injury compensation, statutory funding duties and financial assessments.
The case concerned a disabled adult, CGT, who received a substantial Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) award in 2012, paid into a personal injury (PI) trust. The award included over £2.6 million specifically for future care costs. His mother, then his deputy, had provided undertakings that public funding would not be sought unless the PI award was exhausted or it was otherwise in his best interests. After her death, his father became deputy, without providing similar undertakings.
In 2024, West Sussex County Council decided that CGT should meet his own care costs from his PI trust, ceased funding and sought repayment of funds it had previously provided. CGT’s father brought judicial review proceedings, arguing that the council had acted unlawfully by treating the trust capital as available for care funding. The High Court agreed.
The judge found that:
“It is common ground, as I have noted, that the basic conditions of eligibility in s.18 of the 2014 Act were met in this case. It is also common ground that if, as I have found they should have been, the funds in the PI trust are wholly disregarded, the claimant had no other capital resource. I was also told that the claimant has been assessed as eligible for continuing healthcare funding by NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board with effect from 16 September 2025, but that, prior to that, following the defendant's decision… the PI trust made payments for the claimant's care in the sum of £66,979.15.”
As for the council’s invitation for the court to exercise its discretion to actively intervene to prevent double recovery, the judge found that:
“My starting point is that the double-recovery principle discussed in the relevant authorities is a principle that pertains to the assessment of damages in tort for personal injury. It therefore bears upon a court which is engaged in determining such an award, or considering whether to approve such a proposed award negotiated by the parties. It derives, ultimately, from the principle that damages in tort are (ordinarily) compensatory and not punitive.”
The decision
The court found that the council’s decision to cease funding and demand full repayment of sums paid out were unlawful – and quashed those decisions. It refused an application for indemnity costs, and ordered costs be paid on the standard basis. The parties had agreed what should be repaid to CGT for past payments, but since CGT had been assessed as eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare, the issue of future care payments by the council fell away.
Key points
- Under Schedule 2 of the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, PI trust capital may not be taken into account when assessing financial eligibility for care – even if the PI award was expressly calculated for future care costs.
- The court reaffirmed that concerns about duplication of funding do not permit a local authority to depart from the Care Act framework.
- An undertaking cannot be transferred from one Deputy to another.
- Orders with a Peters undertaking are no longer being made.
Comment
For ICBs and local authorities, this decision removes any ambiguity about whether PI awards can be used to avoid or limit statutory responsibilities.
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