GUIDES
Residence capacity concerns where the person can realistically live, what each option involves and the foreseeable consequences. The assessment must keep the information accessible and proportionate.
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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Residence capacity concerns where the person can realistically live, what each option involves and the foreseeable consequences. The assessment must keep the information accessible and proportionate. The sections below explain the evidence, practical steps and limits of the assessment or process.
For a residence decision, identify the realistic options and the salient features of daily life in each: location, company, care and support, contact with important people, restrictions and foreseeable consequences. Broad costs may be relevant where they materially affect the choice. The courts require proportionate understanding rather than professional-level knowledge, and a list from another case must be adapted to this person’s circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Detailed legal or financial knowledge is not ordinarily required to decide where to live. If a particular tenancy, cost or practical restriction materially affects the real options, explain its salient effect accessibly rather than excluding it automatically. Keep distinct decisions, such as signing a contract or accepting specific care, separately identified while recognising relevant overlap.
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.
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.
No. A diagnosis alone does not establish incapacity. For a Mental Capacity Act decision, provide practicable support, examine understanding, retention, use or weighing and communication, then explain whether any inability is caused by an impairment or disturbance of mind or brain. The conclusion is specific to the decision and time.
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.
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. A conclusion about one decision does not establish capacity for another.
The related pages below explain connected decisions, evidence requirements and legal processes.
Before seeking a report, write down the exact decision, relevant date, reason for concern and intended use. Gather the documents that explain the real options and any communication needs. Check any required form or court direction, agree the scope and total fee, and clarify how missing evidence or further questions will be handled.
A GOOD PLACE TO START
Tell us what is happening and what you need help with. We will listen, explain the options and help you find the right starting point.