Various Applications in respect of ‘Direct Payments’, Re

Facts

The Court of Protection heard seven applications together. Each was brought by a professional property and affairs deputy, drawn from four solicitors' firms, acting for one of AH, SF, MCL, HI, EL, TF and RF. Each of them had received, or in one case was still pursuing, substantial damages for injury. Each had a bespoke care package paid for partly from private funds and partly by Direct Payments from public bodies. The payments came under four schemes: the National Health Service (Direct Payments) Regulations 2013, the Care and Support (Direct Payments) Regulations 2014, the Special Educational Needs (Personal Budgets) Regulations 2014 and the Community Care, Services for Carers and Children's Services (Direct Payments) (England) Regulations 2009. In Lumb v NHS Humber & North Yorkshire ICB the court had held that managing NHS Direct Payments involved welfare-type decisions and so lay outside the 'general' authority of a property and affairs deputy. The deputies were already managing Direct Payments in what they regarded as their deputyship capacity, and would not do so outside a deputyship. They argued that Lumb was wrong and that the role was purely 'operational', and they sought retrospective and prospective authority. The Public Guardian was joined as respondent and the Official Solicitor was appointed amicus curiae. By an order of 21 October 2025 the applications were to be heard together but not joined, with AH as the lead case. A later order on the papers identified the four schemes and set out the agreed questions, twenty-four in all, which were argued at a hearing on 31 July 2026.