Adult appointeeship services
Case reference FOI2025/00307
Received 12 February 2025
Published 19 February 2025
Request
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act regarding appointeeship services provided by your local authority. (Appointeeship is a service where an individual or organization is appointed to manage the financial matters of someone who cannot do so themselves due to age, illness, or disability.)
Specifically, I would appreciate it if you could provide answers to the following questions:
1) How many people within your Local Authority require appointeeship services? This includes individuals who need financial care due to age or disability.
2) Who within your Local Authority is responsible for commissioning or involved in the provision of appointeeship or financial care for vulnerable individuals or the elderly?
3) Could you please provide the contact email address for the person or team responsible for these services?
4) Does your council currently use a system specifically for managing appointeeship services? If so, could you please share the name of the system (e.g., Plianz, CasparGov)?
5) What is the annual budget allocated to appointeeship services within your Local Authority?
6) How does your Local Authority ensure compliance and safeguarding in the provision of appointeeship services?
7) Does your Local Authority use external providers for appointeeship services, or are these services managed in-house?
8) Is there appetite to engage external Appointee Service Providers? Whether this is on a paid or on a referral basis?
Response
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act regarding appointeeship services provided by your local authority. (Appointeeship is a service where an individual or organization is appointed to manage the financial matters of someone who cannot do so themselves due to age, illness, or disability.)
Specifically, I would appreciate it if you could provide answers to the following questions:
1) How many people within your Local Authority require appointeeship services? This includes individuals who need financial care due to age or disability.
Answer: The Service Area have advised the team currently support 256 people as Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) appointee.
2) Who within your Local Authority is responsible for commissioning or involved in the provision of appointeeship or financial care for vulnerable individuals or the elderly?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the Appointeeship service is managed via a service level agreement (SLA) with the local authority teckal company Hoople Ltd.
3) Could you please provide the contact email address for the person or team responsible for these services?
Answer: The contact email address for the team is cop@herefordshire.gov.uk
4) Does your council currently use a system specifically for managing appointeeship services? If so, could you please share the name of the system (e.g., Plianz, CasparGov)?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the team use CasparGov.
5) What is the annual budget allocated to appointeeship services within your Local Authority?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the annual budget allocation is £141,000.
6) How does your Local Authority ensure compliance and safeguarding in the provision of appointeeship services?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the service is delivered via an SLA and is subject to internal audit.
7) Does your Local Authority use external providers for appointeeship services, or are these services managed in-house?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the Appointeeship service is managed via a SLA with the local authority teckal company Hoople Ltd.
8) Is there appetite to engage external Appointee Service Providers? Whether this is on a paid or on a referral basis?
Answer: The Service Area have advised the Hoople service provides Appointeeship services for people who have been assessed as lacking capacity to manage their benefits. There is currently no appetite to consider the recommissioning of these arrangements. Where people are deemed as having capacity but require support with money management they will be directed towards external organisations. We do not make the referrals nor are involved with the funding of such arrangements.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.