Please help us fight a disability-discrimination case

I am a full-time carer for my husband, Ray, who has advanced Alzheimer's and with widespread osteoarthritis myself, life is already challenging.

Our local-council (London Borough of Sutton) recently made life harder for it's disabled residents. Sutton, ignoring strong opposition, elected to fully means-test the higher-disability 'allowance' afforded to those with greater support needs, thus taking it directly from them. This allowance (£35.90) is intended to ease some of the challenges disabled people face. It is not intended to fund care, or fill wasteful council coffers.

In our case this will increase the cost of Ray's (3 days a week) day-centre attendance (a social-outlet for him and the only break from caring I get) by an extra £140 a month. This is a lot for anyone to find, let alone disabled pensioners, forcing those affected to consider giving up care they require through no fault of their own.

There is a moral and legal impediment to the concept of councils preying on their most vulnerable residents. Since these charges will disproportionally affect the disabled, a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act 2010, to disadvantage them in this way represents direct discrimination. As highlighted in the case of SH, R v Norfolk County Council & Anor [2020] in which a young woman, with Downs syndrome, successfully took Norfolk council to court over its decision to effect the same charging-policy as Sutton. Norfolk were judged to have ‘NO lawful basis' for continuing with the altered charging structure as it was discriminatory.

This legal precedent applies equally to Sutton. In order to apply it though someone has to take them to court and I have therefore decided to do so.

Other councils can and have persued this immoral levying of the vulnerable. With court costs beyond the reach of most of us, I imagine they do not expect to be challenged.

Please help me to fund this court case and stand up, not just for us but for others in similar circumstances, in Sutton and other areas.

I started a petition on change.org 'Stop/reverse Sutton council's decision to charge those with enhanced disabilities more'. This has now reached almost 2,500 signatories/supporters. Please do visit this page for more details and sign if you wish to.

Thank you for your consideration and support.

Kind Regards Julie