Transport to social care services
Local authorities have a duty to provide support for adults assessed as needing transport for social care activities: the mere fact that they are receiving a mobility component of their DLA / PIP (etc.) does not negate this duty.
Local authorities have a duty to assess social care needs and a duty to meet ‘eligible needs’. If a disabled person has been assessed as needing (for example) a community based activity provided at a day centre or a need to take part in social/ leisure activities then the council is under a duty to consider the question of transport: how is she/he going to get to the centre / the activity (with their electric wheelchair[1] etc – if needs be)?
This duty does not change because a person is receiving the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or a PIP etc.
The law requires this process for important reasons. A person may, for example, be spending all their mobility component on distinct taxi expenses / the maintenance of their wheelchairs etc. Social security benefits of this kind are not paid to cover local authority responsibilities: the Care Act 2014 creates a distinct regime albeit that it has a charging system that permits account to be taken of certain social security benefits.
Where a need for transport is identified as an eligible need[2] councils are under a duty to ensure it is provided: it is not a discretionary service.
It is unlawful for a council to have a general policy of not providing transport of this kind – although in individual cases a council is able to decide that transport is not an eligible need – provided it is able to explain in clear and logical/lawful terms why this is so.
A number of authorities appear to adopted policies that they will not provide help with travel costs because individuals should pay for this from the mobility component of their DLA (or PIP etc). This is unlawful – and the fact that the mobility component must be disregarded for the purposes of the Care Act 2014 charging regime makes no difference: there are sound reasons why the mobility component is disregarded for virtually all central government and local government income assessment purposes.[3]
While it is of course true that the mobility component of DLA (or PIP etc) could be used to pay for transport to a day centre it is a non-sequitur for a council to state ‘it is therefore ‘available’ to cover the cost of this transport’. For many disabled people the extra transport costs they face as a result of their impairment, exceed the social security mobility component they receive.[4]
A 2025 Local Government Ombudsman report illustrates this point. The council had a policy, that in practice meant that it would not fund transport if the person had a Motability car – even if they were unable to drive it. The authority’s expectation in such cases was that the person’s carers (in this case, his parents) would act as the chauffeur – and if not, that they would make alternative travel arrangements. The ombudsman found this to be maladministration for a number of reasons, not least that it failed to have regard to the carers’ needs and whether they were “available and willing” to do the driving.[5]
In 2012 the Department of Health was sufficiently concerned about local authorities adopting policies of this kind that it issued policy guidance[6] to clarify the position. It referred to evidence that ‘some local authorities were taking the mobility component into account when considering what social services to be provide’. The guidance remains directly applicable to equivalent situations that arise under the Care Act 2014. It states that the ‘Department would like to make the position clear’ that:
… local councils have a duty to assess the needs of any person for whom the authority may provide or arrange the provision of community care services and who may be in need of such services. They have a further duty to decide, having regard to the results of the assessment, what, if any, services they should provide to meet the individual’s needs. This duty does not change because a particular individual is receiving the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance.
A similar argument (concerning the use of social security benefits) was considered by the ombudsman in a 2017 report. It concerned a reduction to a direct payments support package, not because the person’s needs had changed, but because the local authority considered that some of her eligible needs (relating to the ‘nutrition’ and ‘maintaining a habitable home’ outcomes) should be paid from her Disability Living Allowance (DLA). This was held to be maladministration: there is ‘nothing in the Care Act 2014 or the statutory guidance which allows the Council to require a person to use their benefits this way’.[7] In this respect see also a note in this series concerning cuts to local authority packages generally – to access this click here.