Miss Coughlan claimed she should be able to remain at Mardon House, Exeter, purpose built for her and seven others with severe disabilities.

The Health Authority argued Mardon House had become ‘a prohibitively expensive white elephant’ which ‘left fewer resources available for other services’.

The Court of Appeal held there was a legitimate expectation to fair treatment, with a substantive benefit of the ‘home for life’.

Lord Woolf MR said that the failure to keep the home open was ‘equivalent to a breach of contract in private law’.

The truth is that, while [the Secretary of State] has the duty to continue to promote a comprehensive free health service and he must never, in making a decision under section 3, disregard that duty, a comprehensive health service may never, for human financial and other resource reasons, be achievable.ECHR article 8 was also discussed.