Briefing 4, Planning online transactional facilities, set out the pros and cons of financial self-assessment noting that ‘some good examples are emerging’.

Progress since then has been slower than hoped for, though many councils have moved forward, using a variety of approaches to make clearer to their residents when they will have to pay for care.

Most websites surveyed for this briefing now have a clear description of the maximum capital threshold. Several offer some sort of interactive self-assessment ranging from use of SurveyMonkey to one that populates the back-office data directly. In this briefing, we set these out as case studies and start with an overview of the various issues to be considered when embarking on such a project.

What are the key issues and where do councils see benefits to service users and efficiency from online financial self-assessment?