BIM52800 | Care providers: shared lives carers for 2003-04 to 2009-10

Before qualifying care relief was extended to shared lives carers for 2010-11 onwards (see BIM52753), HMRC operated simplified arrangements for carers looking after adults in the carer’s own home.

The purpose of the simplified arrangements was to enable shared lives carers to calculate a reasonable approximation of their actual expenses with the minimum of record keeping.

For the purposes of this arrangement, a person was a shared lives carer if:

• they provided accommodation and a significant degree of personal or non-personal care to an adult or young person who had been placed with them through an adult placement scheme operated by a local authority or HSS trust (in Northern Ireland);

• the adult or young person did not rent the accommodation (i.e. they had no contractual right to exclusive use of any part of the property. They may have had the right to privacy in their own rooms, but this does not amount to a rental), and

• the adult or young person effectively became part of the carer’s family.

HMRC accept that all adult placement carers in schemes recognised by NAAPS fell within this definition. Other schemes are considered on their facts.