Birmingham council's plan to cut care for disabled ruled unlawful

From today's Guardian:

Birmingham council's plan to cut care for disabled ruled unlawful

High court judge describes move as potentially devastating and says cuts failed to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act

By Helen Carter

Birmingham city council, the UK's biggest council, acted unlawfully over a decision to cut its provision of care for disabled people, the high court has ruled.

The judgment, involving four severely disabled people who brought a test case against the council, has widespread implications for local authorities.

Mr Justice Walker said councils had to take account of people's disabilities, even where that involved treating disabled persons more favourably than others.

The Tory-Liberal Democrat authority in Birmingham had proposed the cuts as part of a plan to save £212m by limiting council-funded social care only to those assessed as being in "critical" need.

But the judge described this move as potentially devastating and found that the cuts failed to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. All public bodies had a duty to follow the disability discrimination law, while acknowledging that that placed "significant and onerous" obligations on local authorities, the ruling said.

The council said it would rerun the consultation and make fresh decisions on adult social care in accordance with the ruling.

Disability campaigners welcomed the ruling, though some feared the government could try to create a law allowing councils to make such cuts.

Karen Ashton, who represented three of the four families in the case, said the ruling gave disabled people a voice in law; the proposed policy would have had devastating results. "In cash-strapped times such as these, the public sector must do more to avoid the consequences of cuts falling on those who are least able to bear them. What this case demonstrates is that this may be not only a moral obligation but also a legal one. Local councils, and all other public authorities, must learn this lesson and learn it fast – otherwise there will be many more of these cases coming before the courts."

Walker said there had been a failure to take proper account of the duty to promote equality under laws on disability and discrimination. He found that, when setting its budget and altering its eligibility policy, Birmingham had not given proper consideration to the impact on disabled people and had failed to adequately consult on its proposals.

The issue the council needed to address was "whether the impact on the disabled of the move to critical only was so serious that an alternative which was not so draconian should be identified and funded to the extent necessary by savings elsewhere".

Birmingham council had failed to ask the right questions and councillors were not given the right information to answer those questions. Essential information on the plans was either unclear or only provided at a very late stage.

The judge said the consultation "had not involved any attempt to look at the practical detail of what the move to critical only would entail".

Unison said: "The council should rightly be condemned for defending the indefensible. Thousands of vulnerable people would have been put at risk if it were not for the intervention of the courts."

Kari Gerstheimer, head of legal services at Sense, the deafblind charity, who prepared an expert witness statement, said: "We think it is a really big win for disabled people and we are absolutely delighted by the judge's decision. The judgment said the council failed to consider the impact on disabled people and it sends out an important message even in the time of cuts."We hope this makes councils really think about the choices they make in a civilised society and they should not be cutting services for disabled people with the greatest need. Disabled people are the hardest hit by the cuts and its really unfair that to get out of financial difficulty we are placing the burden on disabled people."

Peter Hay, strategic director for adults and communities at Birmingham council, said: "We welcome the judgment, which has given us greater clarity with regard to the Disability Discrimination Act, and we will now need to rerun the consultation and make decisions about adult social care consistent with the need to analyse the potential impact on disabled people and our compliance with the equality principles set out in law.

"In the meantime, people will continue to receive services to meet needs that have been assessed as substantial and critical. The original dilemma between reducing services in different areas remains. There is no new money as a result of the judgment, and hard choices about meeting growing needs with fewer resources will have to be made by local authorities."