By Gordon Berry

A GROUP that challenged Fife Council over an increase in care charges has claimed that there is either “no law or sod’s law” as it tries to keep tabs on what the local authority is doing.

The comment yesterday from the Campaign Against Charges (CAC) stated that the council’s social work and health chairman, Liberal Democrat councillor Tim Brett had “spun the situation out of orbit” in a weekend statement.

Mr Brett said the Scottish Government’s standards commissioner had rejected charges that Mr Brett and his colleagues had acted against the principles of duty, honesty and openness.

At the same time the ombudsman has stated no evidence of maladministration was found in the decision-making process.

CAC spokeswoman Maureen Closs confirmed complaints had been made to both departments.

She said, “CAC did indeed make complaints to the ombudsman and the standards commission.

“The first was to the ombudsman complaining that the policy on home care charges breached the Disability Discrimination Act.

“What the ombudsman first told us was that it was the job of councillors to properly scrutinise policy documents before they were decided on.

“He also suggested that he could not comment on whether the charges were legal or otherwise as this would be a matter of interpretation that would need to be tested in law,” she added.

“It in turn suggested that the responsibility for the policy documents lay with the paid officers of the council who were the experts and that councillors should be able to trust them.

“It seems to us that we have either no law or sods law when attempting to keep tabs on what the council as a body is doing,” Ms Closs added.

Ms Closs said that the CAC maintains its contention the charges are illegal because of a lack of impact assessments on the policy.

She went on to say that had the council adhered to the law these types of impacts would have become apparent and it would have been obliged to adapt or abandon the home care charges completely.

Ms Closs said that rather than lose face the council had stubbornly ploughed on to implement a policy that is illegal, immoral and unjust causing real poverty to disabled and older people who are already struggling with energy bills that are rising by between 40 and 50% and food inflation of 14% only in the past year.

She said, “They are obviously aware that the home care charges is a big issue and is opposed by the population at large, so they are scrabbling about trying to justify the charges in any way they can.”