Click to edit SEO parameters
Time spent in alternative accommodation / legal detention
- Individuals with entitlement to ADP can spend time living in alternative accommodation, such as a hospital or care home, or in legal detention, such as prison, without losing their entitlement to ADP.
- Spending time in prison will not make an individual habitually or ordinarily resident in that place; this is because they lack a settled and voluntary intention to remain there. In circumstances where an individual has no address outside the alternative accommodation or detention, decision makers should consider the individual’s intention on where they intend to live together with their past address history in order to establish that individual’s residence.
- Where an individual spends time living in a care home, consideration should be given to whether or not the individual has chosen to live there voluntarily, as this will be determinative of whether or not their ordinary and/or habitual residence has changed. In most cases these places will be in Scotland, so it will have no effect on their eligibility for ADP.
- In some situations there will therefore be no effect of time spent in one of these places on an individual’s eligibility in terms of the residence and presence criteria. However, where an individual is in alternative accommodation – including hospitals- in a country outside of the Common Travel Area, this may affect whether they continue to meet the criteria on past presence and presence in the common travel area (Reg 15(1)(d) and (e)). Account should, in these circumstances, also be taken of the provision in relation to temporary absence, allowing 13 weeks absence for any reason and 26 weeks for medical treatment to be treated as presence in the CTA. (Regulation 16).