Date of decision: 29 May 2025
Summary
A family seeking essential Disabled Facilities Grant-funded home adaptations for their children with disabilities faced prolonged Council delays, significantly impacting their children’s daily living and the parents’ health and wellbeing. Blackburn-with-Darwen Council was asked to apologise, make a recognition payment, and provide the family with a plan and timescale concerning their governance.
What happened
The family’s children have a genetic condition affecting bathing, continence and sleep. The parents sought a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) for adaptations to their home. Ms D, the mother, had made a complaint earlier, regarding the delay in the process of making the assessment, but did not receive a response after escalating the complaint to stage two of the complaint handling process. The Council completed the assessment in May 2023, recommending adaptations. In July 2023, the family made an application to the SEN Tribunal concerning the children’s issues and support needs (EHCP). The Tribunal decided to request the Council to reassess the matter.
In September, the Council met with Ms D to discuss the feasibility of the recommendations and later conducted a panel discussion on the matter in October, where it was established that the cost of the recommended adaptations would exceed the maximum available grant.
The Council met with Ms D again in May 2024 to discuss five feasible adaptations that could be implemented to meet the children’s needs. The Council met with Ms D, her husband and the children, and sought relevant medical information from the children’s school between May and July 2024. However, the DFG was STILL not finalised, even when Ms D eventually filed a complaint with the Ombudsman.
What was found
The Ombudsman found the Council failed to progress the DFG recommendations for four months without justification, breaching statutory expectations on adaptation delivery timescales – an evident service failure.
When the Council came to understand that the cost of the adaptations would exceed the maximum grant allowance, it did not take further substantive action until May 2024. This was excused by the Ombudsman as the Council only refrained from acting until the Tribunal’s decision was made. [We comment below as to the irrationality of that position, given that the Tribunal has no jurisdiction over Housing Authority functions but explain the potential relevance to an overall decision, below].
The Council ignored its own complaint processes when it failed to provide Ms D with a stage two response, causing additional frustration and distress. However the Ombudsman stated that it was unlikely that a response received from the Council would have changed the circumstances in any meaningful way.
The Ombudsman ordered the Council to apologise and pay £350 in recognition of these failings. The Council was also ordered to review and reform its DFG handling timeframe and procedures.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
Under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, councils are under a statutory duty to provide DFGs for eligible adaptations in disabled people’s homes. The law sets a maximum grant amount, but councils retain discretion to offer additional assistance beyond the statutory maximum if necessary to meet needs under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, which remains in force for children.
Local authorities are required to means-test applicants for DFGs, but when the adaptation is needed for a child, there is no means testing. However, where there is a service in the form of an additional top up under the CSDPA, there can be means testing of the parent, through the provisions of the Children Act.
Schedule 2, para 6 Children Act 1989 allows authorities to recover some contributions from parents for services provided to children under the Act—including those duties regarding the cost of adaptations now owed under the CSDPA as a result of section 28.
Housing Authorities must also observe specified timescales: grants, once approved, should lead to works being completed within 80 working days, and payment must be made within 12 months of application.
Councils should give urgent consideration to interim solutions or equipment when permanent adaptations are delayed.
Public law requires a rational, lawful, fair and human rights compliant approach to all care and support arrangements, whether children’s or adults’.
County and unitary Councils must not treat the Housing Authority’s DFG decisions as the endpoint for meeting needs, but must consider their wider social care obligations, including the adult’s and child’s care and support needs, the duty to promote wellbeing (or the welfare of the child), and the obligation to act proactively to prevent escalation of need.
Where the maximum DFG resources are insufficient for the job, local authorities still retain an overarching duty under the Care Act and Children Act to arrange and fund adjustments or alternative provision including adaptations, under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Person’s Act, to ensure eligible assessed unmet needs are met.
Failure to do so may breach both statutory obligations and human rights principles relating to dignity, accessibility and private life.
The investigator does not mention by how much the adaptation exceeded the grant maximum, or whether the fact that two children were involved was considered (highly relevant, we would have thought) or what the impact being sustained was on everyone. So it comes over as a weak report, one which could have been more useful if more detailed, in our view.
The Council had a generic two-stage complaint procedure which the DFG complaint would have been heard under. Housing authority functions are not Children Act functions, so the generic process would have governed that aspect of the dispute.
The Children Act sets out a three-stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services, which would have covered decision making about topping up the grant.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Blackburn with Darwen Council (24 005 703) report.
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