Grants for adapting your home
If you or a member of your household is disabled, we may be able to offer you a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) if you need to adapt your home to help you continue living there.
The type of adaptations that can be funded include:
- widening doors
- level access shower
- stair lift
- installing ramps
- providing or improving access to rooms and facilities, for example by fitting a stair-lift or putting in a downstairs bathroom
We offer 2 types of grants:
- Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) - paid to help towards the cost of adapting a home to enable a disabled person to continue living there
- Discretionary Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) - offered to help disabled residents move to a more suitable home if their present one cannot be adapted.
Applying for Disabled Facilities Grants
The first step is to email careandrepair@elmbridge.gov.uk who will be able to advise you further.
Maximum funding available
Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) are means-tested. To find out if you will need to contribute to the costs of the work, we will ask you to complete a grant enquiry form.
The maximum grant available is £30,000 and this usually covers the cost of the most common types of adaptation, for example fitting a level-access shower or stair-lift.
For more expensive adaptations, we may be able to help you explore opportunities for top-up funding.
DFGs will only pay for adaptations that we consider to be 'necessary and appropriate' and 'reasonable and practicable'. If you decide to carry out further work or want the adaptations provided in a different way, you will be responsible for paying the difference in costs between our recommended adaptations and the cost of your proposals.
We will not award a DFG for any works started or completed before we provide you with approval of your grant in writing.
We will pay up to £5,000 towards moving costs via a discretionary DFG, subject to funding being available and means-testing.
Repaying Disabled Facilities Grants
You may have to repay a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) if more than £5,000 was provided, you own the property and it is sold within 10 years of the work being completed. We would not seek to recover more than £10,000.
Help to manage the project
Care and Repair Elmbridge (CARE) can help oversee the project from start to finish. CARE can provide free advice and information, but we do charge a fee to assist you with building works.
If the works are eligible for a council grant, then the fees can be included in the grant and would not cost you anything.