The personal budget

What is a personal budget, exactly?

A figure attached to the plan. Section 26 of the Care Act 2014 is titled Personal budget, and the budget is the cost of meeting the needs the council has decided to meet. It is a price, and the thing being priced is the plan. What it is not: a grant, a pot of money with no purpose, or a benefit. It belongs to the plan rather than to a bank account, which is why a figure quoted before a plan has been agreed is a figure worth questioning. the care and support plan explains the document the figure hangs from.

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 is the figure built?

Out of the plan, by the council, and the working is worth asking about. Two questions do most of the work: how was the figure reached, and what is it expected to buy. The first turns a number into a calculation that can be read. The second ties the number back to the needs the plan records, which is where it came from and the only place it can be defended from. This handbook prints no figures, because an amount without its source and its date is a rumour with a decimal point, and an amount written into a letter to a council has to be defended by whoever wrote it.

What does the financial assessment look at?

What you can afford, separately from what you need. Section 17 is titled Assessment of financial resources, and it is the second of the two questions the law keeps apart: the needs assessment records what an adult needs, and the financial assessment works out what an adult can afford to put towards meeting it. They arrive as one conversation and they are two decisions, taken under two different sections. The request that keeps them apart is for the calculation rather than the result.

Care Act 2014, section 17, Assessment of financial resources. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Three numbers get used as if they were one. Which is which?

The cost of meeting the needs, the part the council pays, and the part the adult contributes. They are three figures and they travel together, which is why a letter that announces a budget without saying which of the three it means is a letter worth going back on. The cost is the plan priced. The council's share is what follows from the duty or the power the decision was taken under. The contribution is what the financial assessment produced. Asking which figure a sentence refers to costs one line and prevents an argument.

Does the budget pay the rent?

The budget is the cost of meeting care and support needs, and rent is housing, which runs in a separate lane with its own rules and its own payers. Where help with housing costs exists, it comes through the benefits system rather than through the plan: what it covers is set out on the GOV.UK page for Universal Credit, updated on 17 October 2024. Keeping the two lanes apart is the most useful single habit in this subject, and supported living explained is built around it, because that is the arrangement where the two bills are confused most often and at the greatest cost.

Care Act 2014, section 26, Personal budget. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026. GOV.UK, Universal Credit, updated 17 October 2024, read on 3 September 2026.

What can the money be spent on?

On the support the plan describes. The plan defines what is being met and the budget prices it, so a purchase that sits outside the plan sits outside the budget too. Where the money is paid across to you and the arrangement is yours to run, what it may be spent on becomes a question about conditions and records, and handling the money takes that question up in full.

Can a budget be changed?

With the plan, at a review. A budget is a figure attached to a plan, so when the plan changes the figure follows it, and a figure that has stopped matching the plan is a matter for the review rather than for a fresh negotiation. changing your support describes how a review is asked for. Steps 8 and 11 of the journey, the money and the budget, sit side by side in the route map with the sections that carry them.

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 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.