Care and Repair Elmbridge

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

Two types of funding are available:

• Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) 
• Discretionary Grants

Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grants

Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) are paid to help towards the cost of adapting a home to enable a disabled person to continue living there. The first step in applying for these grants is to email careandrepair@elmbridge.go.uk who will be able to advise you further.

These grants 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.

You may have to repay a DFG if the following apply:

• 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.

For further information see Major adaptations - for disabled and older people: Surrey County Council.

Discretionary Grants

For information on the application process for Discretionary Grants, see page 8 of the financial assistance policy:

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.