Author and Publication
Author: Nellie Supports Ltd
Publication Date: 15/05/2026
Citation
Department for Constitutional Affairs (2007) Mental Capacity Act 2005: Code of Practice. London: The Stationery Office.
Copywright
Copywright © 2026 Nellie Supports Ltd. All rights reserved.
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This article does not constitute legal advice, clinical advice or a substitute for a decision-specific professional assessment. Where legislation, government guidance, court forms or external professional materials are referred to, those materials remain subject to their own copyright, licensing and re-use terms.
The courts have defined the relevant information for residence decisions with deliberate restraint. Following LBX v K, L and M, the person needs to understand in broad terms: the realistic options; what each place is like and what living there would involve; the sort of care and support available in each; the broad costs where they fall on the person; and the effect on how often they would see family and friends. What is excluded matters just as much: detailed funding mechanics, staffing arrangements and professional-level comparisons are not required, and a report that demands them sets the bar unlawfully high. This guide works through the list and the common errors.
Relevant information must be defined before assessment
Relevant information is the information the person needs to understand, retain, use or weigh for this decision. For capacity for Residence, this usually includes the available options, the type and level of care required, risks of each option, restrictions involved, likely consequences, impact on relationships, and whether the person can weigh practical realities rather than only express a preference. Defining that information at the outset avoids vague, unfair or overbroad assessments.
The options define the information
Residence capacity is a comparison, so the relevant information starts with the options actually available: staying at home with the support on offer, this placement, that relative's house. Options that do not exist, however attractive, are not part of the decision, and an assessment built around a hypothetical choice tests nothing the person will ever decide. Establishing the real options, with the decision-maker or family before the visit, is the first step in defining what the person needs to understand.
What each option is and what it would be like
For each option the person should broadly grasp what sort of place it is, what daily life there would look like, who else would be there or nearby, and what would change from their current situation. Concrete beats abstract: the name of the care home, its location relative to familiar places, whether they would have their own room, matter more to genuine understanding than categories such as residential versus nursing care, and the information should be offered in the terms the person can actually use.
The care and support available in each option
Because residence choices carry care within them, the person should understand in broad terms what help would be available in each place: who would assist with the things they struggle with, how quickly help would come if something went wrong and what would not be available. This is where the person's grasp of their own needs enters the analysis, since weighing the support each option offers is impossible without some working recognition of what support they actually require.
Consequences, risks and what could go wrong
The person should be able to hold the reasonably foreseeable consequences of each option: what the risks of remaining at home actually are for them, falls, self-neglect, isolation, and what would be gained and lost by moving, including the loss of home itself, which is a real consequence deserving real weight. The required grasp is broad rather than exhaustive, and the risks put to the person should be their own evidenced risks, not generic dangers recited from a template.
Cost, where it genuinely bears on the choice
Cost belongs in the relevant information only where it genuinely shapes the options, for instance where remaining at home depends upon funding a package or where a placement consumes assets the person cares about. Where funding arrangements make the options cost-neutral from the person's standpoint, detailed financial understanding is not required, and burdening the assessment with it confuses the residence decision with a financial one the person may not be facing at all.
What is not part of the residence information
The boundaries matter as much as the content. The person does not need to understand tenancy law, care home contracts, funding assessments or the machinery of the Court of Protection to decide where to live, and importing that material sets a test the law does not require. Equally, the detail of their care plan belongs to the care decision, not this one. Keeping the information proportionate protects the assessment from the challenge that the bar was set beyond the decision itself.
Putting the information to the person
How the information is offered decides what the assessment measures. Each option should be presented concretely and one at a time, visits or photographs used where practicable, the comparison revisited later in the conversation to test retention, and the person asked to explain the choice back in their own words. The report should record what information was actually put, in what form, because a finding that the person could not understand information they were never properly given is no finding at all.
Key takeaway
The relevant information for residence capacity is the real comparison the person faces: what each available option is, the support each carries, the consequences of each and, where it truly bears, the cost, kept proportionate to the decision and offered in the form the person can use. Define it before the visit, put it concretely and record what was given, and the assessment measures the decision rather than the assessor's assumptions.
Frequently asked questions
Does a diagnosis automatically mean someone lacks capacity?
No. A diagnosis may explain why capacity is in doubt, but it does not answer the legal question. The assessment must still consider the specific decision, the relevant information, the support provided and whether the person can understand, retain, use or weigh that information and communicate a decision.
What evidence is useful for Capacity for Residence?
Concrete details of each realistic option, presented accessibly, plus the person's own priorities. The assessor's job is to test understanding of the salient points of the actual choices, with support given first, and to record both the information provided and how it was provided.
When is a formal assessment for Capacity for Residence useful?
A formal assessment is most valuable where the residence decision is contested or connected to other proceedings: it fixes the relevant information used, so anyone reviewing the conclusion can check the bar was set where the courts put it.
Related mental capacity assessment pages
These internal links help readers move from this guide to the most relevant Nellie Supports service page, assessment option or legal framework page.
Unsure what residence capacity requires?
Nellie Supports completes residence and care capacity assessments across England and Wales, with a same working day response to every enquiry and every report peer reviewed before delivery. Call 0333 987 5118 or visit the residence capacity assessment service page.