Assessment, plan and budget

What is the chain this dossier follows?

Four links, and they only work in order. An assessment records what you need. A decision, taken against national criteria, says which of those needs the council will work towards meeting. A care and support plan writes that decision down. A personal budget attaches a figure to the plan. Where the money is paid across to you rather than spent on your behalf, a fifth step follows, and it changes what you are responsible for.

The chain is worth holding in your head as one piece, because most arguments about care in England are arguments about a link being skipped. A plan written before an assessment. A budget quoted before a plan exists. A decision about money taken at the same moment as the decision about need. Each of those is a question of sequence before it is a question of fairness, and sequence is the easiest thing to ask about in writing.

The fourteen steps of the whole journey, each tied to the section that carries it, are laid out in the route map. This dossier walks the middle of that journey slowly, one link per page.

Where does the assessment stop and the decision begin?

At two different sections of the same Act. Section 9 is titled Assessment of an adult's needs for care and support, and it is where what you need is recorded. Section 13 is titled The eligibility criteria, and it is where the council decides which of those recorded needs it will work towards meeting. The criteria themselves sit in a statutory instrument rather than in the Act: regulation 2 of the Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015 covers adults who need care and support, and regulation 3 covers carers.

Care Act 2014, sections 9 and 13. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026. Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, SI 2015 No. 313, text as made, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

The two steps feel like one conversation when you are in the room, and they are not. What the assessment writes down is the raw material the eligibility decision is taken on, which is why the wording of an assessment matters long after the meeting is over. This handbook points at the regulations rather than paraphrasing them here, because a paraphrase of an eligibility test is how a reader ends up arguing from words the law does not carry. The rights that attach to the first of the two steps, including the position of a carer and the circumstances in which an assessment can be refused, are set out in your rights under the law.

What does the plan have to carry?

The decision, written where you can read it. Section 24 is titled The steps for the local authority to take, and section 25 is titled Care and support plan, support plan. Between them they are the reason a plan exists as a document rather than as an understanding: the Act requires steps, and the plan is the record that the steps were taken and of what they produced.

Care Act 2014, sections 24 and 25. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

That is also why the plan is the document worth reading twice. It is the place where the needs the council has decided to meet are separated, in writing, from the ones it has decided to leave alone, and it is the document the budget is worked out from. the care and support plan takes that document apart: what it should contain, how a copy is asked for, and what a review is for.

Where does the figure come from?

From the plan. Section 26 of the Care Act 2014 is titled Personal budget, and the budget is a figure attached to the plan: the cost of meeting the needs the council has decided to meet. It is worked out after the plan rather than before it, and a figure that arrives before any plan has been agreed is a figure worth asking questions about.

Care Act 2014, section 26, Personal budget. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

How the figure is built, what a financial assessment looks at, and whether the budget can pay rent, are the questions the personal budget answers.

What changes when the money is paid to you?

Responsibility moves. The Act carries the question in three sections: section 31 for adults with capacity to request direct payments, section 32 for adults without capacity, and section 33 for further provision. Receiving the money means arranging the support the plan describes, keeping the records that arrangement generates, and answering for both, which is a different shape of week from having support arranged for you.

Care Act 2014, sections 31, 32 and 33. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

handling the money sets out what that commitment involves and where capacity fits into the question of who may hold the money.

How do you keep the chain from snapping?

By keeping each link in its own envelope. Ask for the assessment to be recorded as an assessment. Ask for the eligibility decision criterion by criterion. Ask for the plan in writing, and for the parts you disagree with to be recorded in it. Ask how the budget figure was reached, and what it is expected to buy. None of those requests is unusual, and each of them produces a document, which is the only thing that outlasts the meeting.

Sources read for this page

• Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
• Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, SI 2015 No. 313, text as made
• Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025

Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.