If you decide to enter into a deferred payment agreement, you will sign a legal contract or agreement with us. The legal agreement covers both your responsibilities and ours.

To be accepted for a deferred payment agreement, you must meet the requirements for the scheme and we must be able to gain adequate security for the loan. We would usually do this by placing a ‘legal charge’ or mortgage on your home.

To find out more about taking out a deferred payment agreement, speak to your social care worker. If you don’t have a social care worker, you can contact our Adults’ CarePoint. See the back of this leaflet for our contact details.

Ending a deferred payment agreement

You, or someone acting on your behalf, can pay off the loan and end the agreement at any time. For example, you may decide to sell your home and pay off the loan.

There are circumstances in which we may stop deferring costs for your care. For example:

• if the amount you owe on the deferred payment agreement has reduced the value of your savings and investments (including the value of your property) to a level where you become eligible for local authority support;
• if you no longer need to be in a care home;
• if you do not keep to the requirements of the deferred payment agreement; or
• if your home is no longer included in the assessment of your finances for any reason and you then become eligible for funding from us, for example:
  • in certain exceptional circumstances, if a husband, wife or relative (as defined in the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014) has moved into the property after the deferred payment agreement started; or
  • if a relative who was living in the property at the time the deferred payment agreement started becomes a dependent relative.

You will still have to pay the interest that builds up on the amount of money we have already paid for your care (the deferred payments). We would give you at least 30 days’ notice that further deferred payments will stop.

Your social care worker or another member of staff will explain these circumstances to you in more detail. If you do not end the agreement, it will finish when you die and the loan will need to be paid from your estate within 90 days. Interest will continue to build up on the deferred payment following your death until the loan is paid in full.