GUIDES
A residence capacity report should compare realistic living options and support, using the person’s own circumstances and wishes. Residence, care decisions and whether arrangements amount to deprivation of liberty are connected but distinct questions.
Author: Nellie Supports Ltd
Publication Date: 15/05/2026
Department for Constitutional Affairs (2007) Mental Capacity Act 2005: Code of Practice. London: The Stationery Office.
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A residence capacity report should compare realistic living options and support, using the person’s own circumstances and wishes. Residence, care decisions and whether arrangements amount to deprivation of liberty are connected but distinct questions. This guide covers the relevant evidence, support, process and limits in England and Wales.
A residence capacity report is built from the options, the person and the records: the realistic residence options documented in accessible detail; the person's presentation in a structured assessment that tests the salient points of each option; and the records, care needs assessments, daily living evidence, medical notes and the person's own words about home. The report must show which options were discussed, what support was given, what the person understood and weighed, and why any inability is caused by the impairment. This guide lists the evidence and how each piece is used.
Provide accurate descriptions of the realistic residence options and support, including what is available and any material uncertainty. These establish the significant information to discuss with the person and avoid assessing an option that is not actually offered.
Care, social work and safeguarding records can help identify the person’s needs and relevant risks. Use accurate examples from their circumstances, consider contrary evidence and distinguish a past incident from an inability to weigh the present options.
Medical records ground the diagnostic limb and explain the trajectory: the diagnosis, cognitive testing where it exists, recent acute episodes and, critically in residence cases, anything suggesting a temporary suppression of capacity, delirium, infection, the aftermath of a fall or anaesthetic. Evidence that the presentation may be temporary bears directly on whether to assess now or reassess once the acute picture settles, and the report should show that question was considered.
Choose a setting and method that support this person’s participation, whether at home, in hospital, in a care setting or remotely where suitable. Present the realistic options accessibly and record what the person can explain and weigh. Explain any limitations of the setting rather than assume every ward or remote conversation is inadequate.
Family, carers and professionals may provide relevant history about needs, options and wishes. Attribute accounts, consider reliability and interests and seek differing views where material. Disagreement should be recorded fairly without assuming that every residence decision divides the family.
The report must show the comparison was genuinely offered: each option described concretely, visits or photographs used where practicable, the discussion held at the person's best time and revisited to test retention, and the person's responses recorded verbatim. A finding of incapacity is only as strong as the evidence that the person was given a fair opportunity to engage with the actual choice, and this is the section of a residence report that scrutiny reaches first.
Whatever the capacity conclusion, the report should record the person's wishes and feelings about where they live, in their own words, together with anything they plainly can still decide within the wider situation. Where incapacity is found, this evidence feeds directly into the best interests decision and the least restrictive analysis that follow, and its absence forces those decisions to proceed on second-hand impressions of the very person they concern.
Identify the residence options, relevant time, sources, support, findings, causal reasoning and limitations, with the person’s wishes recorded. A residence report can contribute to other decisions but does not replace a care-capacity assessment, best-interests process or Article 5 analysis.
A residence opinion should address the real options with support, record the person’s voice and explain any inability. It does not itself decide where the person must live, authorise a move or resolve the separate question of deprivation of liberty.
No. A diagnosis does not establish lack of capacity. For a decision under the Mental Capacity Act, consider the relevant information and practicable support, then assess understanding, retention, use or weighing and communication by any means. Any inability must be caused by an impairment of, or disturbance in the functioning of, the mind or brain. Will-making has its own legal test.
Details of each realistic option, care needs assessments, evidence of how the person manages at home, medical records and any earlier assessments. The person's own expressed wishes belong in the file whatever the conclusion, because best interests decisions must engage with them.
A fully evidenced report matters most where the decision is contested, where DoLS or the Court of Protection are involved, or where the move is connected to selling the person's home and the whole file may be scrutinised later. Can someone have capacity for one decision but not another? Yes. Capacity is decision-specific and time-specific. The assessment must identify each decision and relevant time rather than give a general label.
The related guides below provide further explanation of the decisions, evidence and legal processes discussed here.
Get a clear account of the realistic options and the support each offers. Share the person’s expressed wishes and relevant records; ask separately about any care, best-interests or liberty issue that the residence assessment will not settle.
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