Judicial review of closure of Independent Living Fund begins in High Court

March 13, 2013

A judicial review into the government’s planned abolition of the Independent Living Fund has begun at the High Court today.

The claimants are five service-users of the fund, which provides support to 20,000 disabled people in the UK and is set to close in 2015. This would see service-users become dependent on local authority services.

Advised by law firms Deighton Pierce Glynn and Scott-Moncrieff & Associates, the claimants argue that the ILF’s abolition would force them into residential care or mean that they were unable to leave their homes.

The grounds for the judicial review are that the consultation process and the decision taken on 18 December 2012 to close the fund failed to comply with legal requirements.

The claimants, who are asking the court to quash the decision, will argue that:

The government had failed to explain why it was only considering closing the fund, rather than other options, such as continuing the fund and re-opening it to young adults who wanted to live independent lives;  
The consultation exercise conducted by the Department for Work and Pensions did not give enough information about the difference between local authority assessment and provision and the ILF – “local authority services focus on basic needs whereas the ILF is about enabling people to be independent, to work and be full citizens,” the claimants’ lawyers said;
The government had failed to undertake a proper assessment of how the proposal would affect disabled people, in breach of their legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 and under Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is intervening in the case. It said it would aim to clarify the point at which authorities were obliged to have due regard to eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations when making plans.

The Commission will say that a policy which adversely affected rights protected by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and was made without appropriate information, was likely to breach the public sector equality duty.

Wendy Hewitt, the EHRC’s Deputy Director (Legal), said: "There are a series of cases in which the Commission has sought to clarify that the public sector duty is as robust under the Equality Act 2010 as it was under previous legislation. This has been done in part by referring to standards in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

"This case raises issues as to the point at which steps must be taken to meet the duty and to what extent authorities must consult to ensure they have enough information to assess the impact on equality."

The ILF has been closed to new applicants since June 2010.