A GRIEVING son has been landed with a £32,000 care home bill for his father after Swindon Council overlooked charging the old man for almost three years.

Peter Davies, 61, is sure his father, Norman, who died aged 98 in December 2012, made arrangements to pay for his stay at Wick House, in Liden.

So he was shocked to receive an invoice of £39,020 for unpaid costs months after his father’s death.

Norman, who had lost both legs, survived prostate cancer and had dementia, was not invoiced at all while he lived at the home, between October 2009 and his death.

The home, off Buttermere, was originally run by Swindon Council but was taken over in August 2011 by the firm Agincare and renamed Edge Hill. He moved there from Brookdene Lodge, a private sheltered housing complex in Haydon Wick, where he had lived with his wife until she died in 2005.

Swindon Council has offered to reduce the bill for the care it provided to £32,253 and also write off an additional £9,908 still owed to Agincare in recognition of the distress caused. Peter had already arranged for his father to pay £8,017 to Agincare after the firm contacted him about their fees in December 2011.

But Peter says a 50 per cent discount would be fairer as the council failed to spot anything was wrong until June 2012 – and then only revealed the scale of the debt in an invoice in February 2013.

Peter, a geography teacher in Singapore who used to visit his father in June and December every year, said: “It’s the fact of their incompetence throughout this matter. I think they’re trying to imply I was not around for my dad which upsets me a lot. They’re also trying to imply ‘Well, after all he did get care’, but that’s not my issue.”

Peter says his father, a retired railway worker from Gorse Hill, filled out an HSBC direct debit form in December 2009 and trusted the fees were being paid.

The first indication something could be wrong was in December 2011, when Agincare contacted him about back payment and ongoing payment for their fees since August 2011, which resulted in him setting up a standing order from his father’s bank account. Agincare received the money from that point until his father’s death, but this only related to the fees owed to them, not Swindon Council, and there was no indication from Agincare that money was also owed to the council.

Then in June 2012, a council finance officer contacted him to say his father had debts. The council says the details of the debt were not sent “due to personal circumstances of staff members”.

The next Peter heard about the debt was when his father’s estate was billed for £39,020 in February.

Peter, a father-of-three, said: “I was totally shocked. It was unbelievable.”

In a letter to Peter, Angela Plummer, the council’s strategic commissioner adults, said that in early 2010 the council asked Wick House to ask his father to write a cheque for the initial care he had received while a standing order was set up to pay for ongoing fees.

But staff said he was reluctant to write a cheque for £30, let alone £6,000. The idea of setting up standing orders was also discounted as “inappropriate”.

She wrote: “Regrettably no details existed for a financial representative and due to pressure of work the matter was put aside and then overlooked. I apologise for this oversight.”

Peter took the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman, who concluded that the offered fees discount was sufficient to remedy the fault.

THE COUNCIL SAYS...

A Swindon Council spokesman said: “This was an entirely regrettable situation and we have apologised to Mr Davies for our oversight in failing to ensure that his father’s care payments were up to date.

“We have since made improvements to our invoicing service to ensure this does not happen again.

“We agreed to write off almost a third of the care costs as a gesture of goodwill, which the Local Government Ombudsman supported.

“However, as Mr Davies’ father’s savings were beyond the threshold set out by the Government’s Fairer Charging Policy, he was liable to pay a contribution to his care as set out by those guidelines and the amended full cost of his care is still outstanding.

“Even the poorest elderly and vulnerable people have to contribute something towards their residential care costs and, with the council facing unprecedented financial pressures, it is vitally important that everyone pays their assessed contributions.”