Reclaim Care Home Fees – Retrospective NHS CHC Claims

You may be owed thousands in wrongly paid care home fees. If the NHS didn’t assess your loved one for Continuing Healthcare funding, we can help you reclaim care home fees. We support families across England with trusted, expert advice and No Win No Fee options.

•    Reclaim care home fees – England-wide
•    Get expert help with CHC appeals
•    Understand your rights after NHS delays
•    Start your retrospective CHC claim today
•    Explore No Win No Fee options

If your loved one paid for care they should not have, you may be able to reclaim care home home fees amounting to thousands through a retrospective NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) claim.

Our experts have helped hundreds of families across England take on the NHS and reclaim care home fees that were wrongly paid. With over 3,000 five-star reviews, we’re known for clear advice, expert support, and real results.

You don’t need to go through this alone. We can review your case, advise you on the next steps and, where possible, offer a No Win No Fee agreement so there’s nothing to pay upfront.

“We thought we’d never get the fees back for Mum’s care, but Winston Solicitors took on the NHS and won us over £80,000. We’re so pleased and grateful for the result.” - Client in Manchester

Retrospective NHS CHC claims give you the opportunity to reclaim care home fees

A retrospective CHC claim allows you to ask the NHS to refund care fees that were wrongly paid if your loved one was eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare but was not assessed at the time.

This is known as a Previously Unassessed Period of Care (PUPoC). It applies when the NHS did not properly review whether someone should have received fully funded care for a past period.

You can apply whether your loved one is alive or has passed away. If the NHS agrees they were eligible, they must repay the care costs, with added interest.

To start a retrospective NHS CHC claim, you’ll need to send a formal request to the relevant NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB). This is the organisation responsible for funding and assessing care needs in your area.

If you’re acting to reclaim care home fees for someone else, such as a parent or late relative, you’ll need to prove that you have legal authority to act on their behalf. This might mean having Power of Attorney or being the executor of their will.

Once your request is accepted, the ICB will collect records and evidence about the person’s care needs during the time in question, including obtaining your views. A multi-disciplinary team (MDT) will review the information and recommend whether the person should have received NHS funding. The ICB makes the final decision.

If the ICB agrees that your loved one was eligible, they will ask you to provide proof of fees paid. They should then offer a full refund for that period, including interest.

If they decide the person was not eligible, or only partially eligible, you can appeal the outcome. Appeals go through a Local Resolution meeting with the ICB, and if needed, a further review by NHS England’s Independent Review Panel.

We support families at every stage, from gathering evidence to preparing strong appeal submissions.

“Many families are surprised to learn they can challenge NHS funding decisions, even years later,” says James Urquhart-Burton, Solicitor and Head of Continuing Healthcare Claims at Winston Solicitors. “We’re here to make that process clear and manageable.”

Yes, you can reclaim care home fees for someone who has died. If your loved one has passed away, the claim can usually be brought by the executors or administrators of their estate.

You should act quickly, as medical and care records aren’t kept forever. Missing records can make your case harder to prove. We can undertake a free initial assessment of your retrospective claim and advise you whether it has a realistic prospect of success.

There are cut-off dates for retrospective claims in England. You can only reclaim care home fees paid for periods of care after 1 April 2012. This is due to a government deadline that closed older claim periods.

If you're in Wales, different rules apply.  You can only go back 12 months from the date of your request.  Winston Solicitors does not currently act in Welsh cases. However, if you would like to speak to one of our experts, we can recommend solicitors who can help you to reclaim care home fees in Wales.

We’ve helped many families reclaim care home fees that were paid in error through retrospective CHC claims. Here’s how we work:
How to Make a Retrospective NHS CHC Claim

1. Get a free initial assessment from our legal team
2. We assess your case and advise on next steps
3. You authorise us to act on your behalf
4. We submit the claim to your local ICB
5. We manage the claim on your behalf
6. We make clear arguments to present your case in its strongest light
7. We support you with an appeal, if needed
8. We ensure your refund is correct where the claim is successful

We’ll also advise whether your claim is suitable for a No Win No Fee agreement. If not, we’ll provide clear fee options upfront.

Here are some hands-on examples of retrospective NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding cases. Our work speaks for itself.

I instructed James to bring a retrospective Continuing Healthcare claim on behalf of my late mum. Mum lived in a nursing home for the last 5 years of her life before she passed away. Initially the ICB said she wasn’t eligible, and I was ready to throw in the towel. James told me that he firmly believed that there was intensity, complexity and unpredictability associated with my mum’s needs. Mum had Alzheimer’s dementia, and she had no awareness of her condition and was completely disorientated. She wandered endlessly around the care home, lashing out at the carers and other residents. She was prescribed a medication called Haloperidol to help, and James was firmly of the view that the level of skill needed to meet my mum’s medication and behavioural needs meant that she was eligible and he persuaded me to appeal the decision.  

At the first stage of the appeal, the ICB reconsidered its decision and agreed my mum had a Primary Health Need and agreed to refund £249,000 worth of wrongly paid care home fees and interest to my mum’s estate. My family and I will be eternally grateful to James for his tenacity.

My mother has dementia and receives care at home from two permanent live-in carers. I can’t imagine she could be any worse. The ICB assessed her as ineligible, and I instructed James to appeal against the decision. We had to go all the way to an NHS England Independent Review Panel to get justice, but that’s exactly what James helped me to do. James advised that following our success at the Independent Review Panel, the ICB would need to reimburse the care fees we had paid whilst the appeal was ongoing. The ICB was very difficult to deal with and, having been through a legal dispute in the past, I found the appeals process very different, and I was relieved to have the guiding hand of an expert to keep things on track.”