Date of decision: 20 February 2025
Summary
A complaint about significant delays and poor communication by the Council in processing a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) for the father’s essential home adaptations, resulting in lengthy deprivation of basic care needs and frustration for the applicant and his family.
What happened
Mr D, living with his son Mr C, requested a Disabled Facilities Grant for an adaptation due to decreasing mobility. The Council sent the DFG application forms to him in July 2023. Mr C returned the completed forms in September and October 2023.
The Council then made errors in sending further unnecessary forms and failed to progress the application efficiently, generating a four week delay. The Council initially pursued a vertical lift, then changed plans due to impracticality, and only later identified that the bathroom could not in fact be adapted as needed. Over a year passed without Mr D being able to shower. Due to this delay, Mr C decided that they would privately pay for a stairlift.
The Council refused to repay the costs of the stairlift as it said it was unsafe and not suitable to meet Mr D’s needs. The Council decided to continue to look at installing a vertical lift. The Council asked Mr C to agree to an adapted bathroom together with a vertical lift. The assigned contractor cancelled on one occasion and failed to attend on another. On both occasions Mr D [we think it was in fact Mr C] had to take time off work to meet with the contractor. Mr C requested the contractor be changed. The Council apologised for the delay and said that they may need to get building regulations approval because of underfloor piping.
By February 2024, the adaptation had still not progressed. Mr C contacted the Council who replied saying building regulations approval was indeed necessary and officers needed to complete the relevant forms with Mr C.
In May 2024, the Council changed the bathroom plans again, after identifying that there was inadequate turning room in the bathroom to meet Mr D’s long term care needs.
The Council eventually decided a vertical lift and ensuite shower room was the only suitable solution. The Council accepts that this should have been identified earlier and the bathroom was never in a position to have the adaptations that Mr D needed.
What was found
The Council had already accepted fault for errors in information requests and internal email communication which caused delay; also, for failing to provide updates to Mr D unless requested by him, inaccurate measuring, the men’s time in unnecessary appointments, conduct of certain staff members – and the failure to offer Mr D a carer’s assessment [we think that the investigator meant Mr C].
It was not until 7 May 2024, eight months after the original application, that the Council realised there was an error and sought to amend the plans accordingly.
The Ombudsman found the Council at fault for failing to approve the grant application promptly and as soon as practicable. Fault was also found for poor communication, and for not following its own policy regarding priority scores and waiting times. It did not appear that the Council followed its own Disabled Facilities Grants and Associated Assistance Policy which outlined that people should receive a priority score, estimated waiting time and information about the process.
The government’s non-statutory March 2022 guidance identifies five key stages to delivering home adaptations:
- Stage 1: First contact with the service. Councils should ensure the public has access to information and advice about the DFG process.
- Stage 2: First contact to assessment and identification of the relevant works. An occupational therapist (OT) will assess the person’s needs and potential solutions through home adaptations.
[Access to a bath or shower is the issue as to which ‘necessity’ must be determined. This is not a Care Act assessment concept with regard to avoiding significant impact or enabling a person to achieve a Care Act domain of daily living related to hygiene: it is decided on the basis of what is required to bring about the outcome deemed to be essential in accordance with Parliament’s intention for disabled people’s housing, under s23 of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996), thereby triggering a duty. Lesser works may be approved if what is wanted is more than is necessary to bring about the outcome, in the discretion of the Housing Authority.
The Guidance says that the relevant issue regarding bathing is this one: “The disabled person cannot access a room with a bath and/or a shower or cannot use the existing bath and/or shower.”
In the interests of accuracy, the statute says this:
(f) facilitating access by the disabled occupant to, or providing for the disabled occupant, a room in which there is a bath or shower (or both), or facilitating the use by the disabled occupant of such a facility;]
- Stage 3: Identification of the relevant works to submission of the formal grant application. The person completes and submits the application form together with designs and costing for the works (where necessary).
- Stage 4: Grant application to grant decision. The Council will check the application and issue a decision letter. If a council refuses a grant, it must explain why. The 1996 Act sets a maximum period of 6 months for a local authority to decide an application.
[The statute provides as follows:
s34(1) A local housing authority shall by notice in writing notify an applicant for a grant as soon as reasonably practicable, and, in any event, not later than six months after the date of the application concerned, whether the application is approved or refused.]
The delays caused three months of avoidable hardship and left Mr D unable to shower for over a year. Mr C experienced frustration, time, and trouble, including having to take time off work for cancelled appointments.
The Council had already agreed to make a symbolic payment of £450 to Mr C and Mr D, up from the original £200 it had offered. The Ombudsman considered that this increased amount was not sufficient to address the injustice to either of them and recommended that this be increased to £750 for Mr D and £400 to Mr C. A work and communication plan was to be provided for the delivery of current adaptations so that Mr C could have a clear timeline of when to expect completion of the different stages of the process.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
Readers may be assisted to know that the report makes it clear that the events investigated were sandwiched between a year or more of delay before the ombudsman was prepared to start the investigation, because there was no obvious reason why he could not have complained about the saga, earlier, as far as the investigator was concerned, and some events were still ongoing, so not properly for the Ombudsman at all.
The investigation commenced as of the facts at 24 July 2023 when the Council first issued the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) application form to the family and it continued up to 28 May 2024.
Disabled Facilities Grants are provided under the terms of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. Councils have a statutory duty to give grants to disabled people for certain adaptations. Before approving a grant, a council must be satisfied that the work is necessary to achieve the outcomes in section 23, appropriate to meet the disabled person’s needs, and is reasonable and practicable.
The non-statutory Guidance reissued in 2022 called “Disabled facilities Grant (DFG) Delivery: Guidance for local authorities in England” sets out stages that the government regards as a lawful approach to the system. The Guidance would appear to treat the application as only made after all the preliminary assessments and thinking have been done, which is hopelessly delayed because of a national shortage of OTs and a limited budget for DFGs for what is a mandatory duty! This Guidance allows for a very long time before the ‘application’ is regarded as ‘made’.
We’ve set the Act out here, to make good our suspicion that this could in fact be challenged:
2 Applications for grants.
- No grant shall be paid unless an application for it is made to the local housing authority in accordance with the provisions of this Chapter and is approved by them.
- An application for a grant shall be in writing and shall specify the premises to which it relates and contain—
- particulars of the works in respect of which the grant is sought (in this Chapter referred to as the “relevant works”);
- unless the local housing authority otherwise direct in any particular case, at least two estimates from different contractors of the cost of carrying out the relevant works;
- particulars of any preliminary or ancillary services and charges in respect of the cost of which the grant is also sought; and
- such other particulars as may be prescribed.
…
- The Secretary of State may by regulations prescribe a form of application for a grant and an application for a grant to which any such regulations apply is not validly made unless it is in the prescribed form.
No such form has ever been prescribed, as far as we are aware, which means that if an applicant got the work together in advance, the 6 month period could be used for consideration – and not, as the Guidance suggests, just for ‘checking the details’ which will of course have taken a good deal longer than 6 months to pull together, by any Housing Authority following the Guidance, as opposed to using that 6 months to do the thinking and consultation with Social Services.
We also note with some concern that the investigator just glossed over the issue of the stairlift expenditure, which would have been an outlay that could have been awarded by way of restitution for breach of statutory duty if only the investigator had been prepared to engage with the concept. The investigator could have come to a conclusion as to whether the stance that the stairlift was unsafe was actually justifiable in relation to the evidence and rationale for that position.
The report mixes up Mr D and Mr C at some points suggesting that the father should have had a carer’s assessment and that his time, as well as Mr C’s, in taking time off work, had been wasted; we think it was unlikely that Mr D was still working but we cannot be sure.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (24 002 363) report.
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