How does the Council decide if I can get a Disabled Facilities Grant?
The rules about whether you can get a Disabled Facilities Grant are complicated and set down in law. The first thing that is needed is for the Occupational Therapist to agree that adaptations are 'appropriate and necessary'.
After this, the Adaptations Team has to decide what adaptations can be considered. Normally a Housing Technical Officer from the Adaptations Team will discuss this with the Occupational Therapist. The law says that the adaptations must be “reasonable and practicable” and the Housing Technical Officers will normally offer the most cost-effective option to meet your needs. This means that you may have to consider adaptations that are not what you are expecting. It may still be possible, though, to get some help towards different and more expensive adaptations.
If everyone then agrees that the adaptations will meet your needs and that they will work in your home, you can then apply for a Disabled Facilities Grant to see if you can get help to pay for them. You should not carry out any work before your Disabled Facilities Grant is approved by the Adaptations Team, because a grant cannot be given for work that has already been carried out.
The law is clear that we can only give grants to meet your disability needs. This means that we cannot consider other problems that you and your family may have, like not having enough space. However, we will look at how any adaptations to help with your disability will affect other people who live with you.
What if my house cannot be adapted to meet my needs?
Sometimes it is not possible to adapt someone’s home to meet their disability needs. If this is the case, the Occupational Therapist will talk to you about what your options are. We can also put you in touch with the Housing Options service who can help you with applying for rehousing if you wish.
If you want to move somewhere else the Occupational Therapist will look at it before you decide to go ahead, to see if it is suitable and can be adapted. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to say for definite whether you can get a Disabled Facilities Grant until you have moved.