Closure of Independent Living Fund

On 6 March 2014, Minister of State for Disabled People Mike Penning announced that the Independent Living Fund (ILF) would end on 30 June 2015. Funding and responsibility for users passed to local authorities from July.

The ILF was originally established in April 1988. Monthly payments were made to people with disabilities on low incomes, to help with the purchase of personal care and domestic help. These were seen as a means to topping-up social care.

The government had originally announced on 18 December 2012 that the ILF would close in March 2015. However, a legal challenge was mounted by five ILF recipients and the case went up to the Court of Appeal, which upheld the claim that the DWP Secretary of State had failed to discharge her Public Sector Equality Duty. The government published a new equality impact assessment, which sought to assure that the new measures and reforms in the social care system would ensure that all people with care and support needs would be supported.