How to Prove 35 Hours of Care for a Council Tax Carer Discount

What the 35-Hour Test Actually Requires

The council tax carer disregard applies when a qualifying carer provides at least 35 hours of care per week on average. The legislation doesn't prescribe how those hours are spread across the week — care can be clustered, intermittent, or structured around unpredictable routines.

What counts as "care" is broad: personal care (washing, dressing, toileting), mobility assistance, medication management, meal preparation, supervision for safety, emotional support during episodes of confusion or distress, and managing appointments and correspondence on the person's behalf.

Night-time care can count when you are actively providing it. Record the time spent responding to needs — turning the person, responding to falls, or managing incontinence — rather than counting the whole night simply because you sleep in the room or are available to respond.

How Councils Verify the Hours

Most councils ask for a signed self-declaration confirming you provide at least 35 hours of weekly care. There is no national standard form — each billing authority has its own.

Some councils accept the declaration at face value, particularly when the cared-for person receives a high-rate disability benefit. Others, especially for backdated claims covering multiple years, may ask for more detail: a description of a typical care week, or a breakdown of daily activities and the time each takes.

Councils do not routinely send someone to observe you. But if a claim is queried — say, during a backdating request — a structured care log gives you something concrete to point to.

Building a Weekly Care Log

A care log doesn't need to be complicated. A simple table covering seven days, with rows for morning, afternoon, evening, and overnight, works well. For each block, note what you did and roughly how long it took.

Activities to include:

• Personal care: helping with washing, bathing, dressing, continence, oral care
• Medication: administering, prompting, supervising, collecting prescriptions
• Meals: preparing, serving, assisting with eating, managing dietary needs
• Mobility: helping someone move around the home, transfers to and from chairs or bed, using hoists or wheelchairs
• Safety supervision: monitoring for falls, wandering, confusion, self-harm risk
• Appointments: arranging and attending GP visits, hospital appointments, benefit reviews
• Household management on their behalf: handling post, paying bills, liaising with services
• Emotional support: calming distress, managing behavioural episodes, providing reassurance

Add the times up at the end of each week. The legal threshold is 35 hours averaged — an occasional week at 32 doesn't disqualify you if the average across a reasonable period is 35 or more.

What If You Share Care with Someone Else

If two or more carers each provide 35 hours of care to the same person, each carer can be disregarded separately. The hours aren't divided between you — each person is assessed against the 35-hour threshold individually.

But if you care for two different people in the household, you can't add the hours together. The 35 hours must be for one qualifying individual.

Keeping the Log Going

You don't need to fill in a log every day forever. Two or three representative weeks is usually enough for the initial application. Keep a copy in case the council asks questions during processing.

If your care situation changes — say the person's condition worsens and your hours increase, or improve and your hours drop — update the log. You're required to tell the council within 21 days if your care hours fall below 35.

The Council Tax Carer Disregard Guide includes a printable weekly care activity log designed for council tax claims, along with an evidence checklist covering everything councils typically ask for.

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