A HIGH Court has ruled against a disabled Slough man in his bid for homecare at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the council.

The Slough man's arms and legs were paralysed after he fell from a roof.

Slough Borough Council has refused to pay the annual cost of £468,000 of taxpayers' money necessary to fund a homecare package for the tetraplegic man.

The council are already paying £156,000 a year to pay for the man's care at a specialist unit, and they have committed to continuing that support.

Councillor Sabia Hussain, commissioner for health and social care, said: “This case highlights that councils up and down the country are having to make difficult decisions on the level of funding they can give for individuals who require care and support, and we are clearly no different.

“I was hoping the social care crisis would have been addressed in Wednesday’s autumn statement, but the government failed to set out any plans to provide the sustainable funding the adult social sector and our most vulnerable residents so desperately need.”

The High Court ruling was based on the man's mental capacity to make decisions about his care, which medical experts believe fluctuates.

The judge at a Court of Protection hearing in London, Mr Justice Holman said: "Already at least £130,000 has been incurred on legal expenditure in the course of these proceedings, all of it funded out of public funds.

"I am deeply concerned at the prospect of incurring yet further tens of thousands of pounds of expenditure of public funds on some abstract determination of capacity if, realistically, there is no choice in the way forward for this particular patient in his circumstances."