1. Does the Council have a policy setting out the circumstance where a Direct Payment paid by the council to a family to meet the needs of a disabled child may be requested to be repaid to the council?
Yes.
2. Please provide a copy.
This information is already publicly available on this Council webpage.
3. How many times in each of the last 5 years has your council requested direct payments to meet the need of a disabled child to be repaid to the council?
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. The Council does not hold a centralised record of this data, therefore a manual search of each child’s record would be required. In order to locate and retrieve these figures, 1400 records would need reviewing, which would take 15 minutes per record, equating to 350 hours work.
In the interests of providing advice and assistance, the Council can confirm that within the last 5 years there have been some requests for direct payments to be repaid.
4. Do these figures relate to a calendar, financial, school, or other type of year?
Not applicable.