FOUR facts on the ins and outs of paying for care and whether local authorities can take your home to pay for care.

  • A Department of Health Policy Paper in 2013 estimated that 55,000 people in England enter residential care as a self-funder each year. Of these, about 35,000 need to access the value in their homes to pay for that care. Only 4,000 of those people take out Deferred Payment Agreements.
  • If your home is considered available to meet your care costs its value will be ignored for 12 weeks, but thereafter it is considered available. In Somerset it takes about 100 days on average to get an offer once you put a house up for sale. It can then take a similar amount of time before the sale completes. This means that even if you put your house on the market the day you go into care it is unlikely it will be sold until some time after the local authority expects you to start paying.
  • The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has estimated that even with the proposed cap on care fees a person with over £155,000 in assets (including their house) will pay on average £140,000 towards their care.
  • The average house price in Somerset is £188,645.

Source: Ashfords