Date of decision: 28 November 2025
Summary
A father asked the Council for financial support to adapt the family’s small two-bedroom home so his disabled son could have his own bedroom and an accessible upstairs bathroom. The Council delayed for many months, provided poor and sometimes confusing communication, and then refused to progress a Disabled Facilities Grant because it believed the works would cost too much, leaving the family in cramped, unsuitable conditions and prolonged uncertainty.
What happened
The family, a father living with his wife and three children in a two‑bedroom mid‑terraced house with only a ground‑floor bathroom and kitchen extension, asked the Council in August 2022 for help to adapt the home for their disabled son, E.
E, who has a learning disability and multiple physical health conditions, was sharing a bedroom with his parents while his two older siblings used the other two bedrooms.
The Council allocated the request to an occupational therapist (OT1) in November 2022, and OT1 assessed E’s needs in February 2023, concluding he needed his own bedroom and access to a first‑floor bathroom. OT1 said they would submit a feasibility request to Council surveyors for an extra upstairs bedroom and shower room, and also asked them to consider a loft conversion; the father understood both adaptations were necessary, and that OT1 would support the adaptation request even if surveyors initially disagreed.
The internal record shows OT1 did not submit the feasibility request until May 2023, after which the case was reassigned to another occupational therapist (OT2). OT2 chased surveyors in early June 2023; they could not respond immediately but visited the property in mid‑July 2023, where, according to the father, a surveyor indicated they would not support adaptations, apparently because of likely cost, and he asked for clear reasons.
Hearing nothing further, the father contacted a senior occupational therapy manager in October 2023, who in turn sought views from the surveyor and that officer’s manager. Surveyors said they could not support a loft conversion because installing stairs would remove the smallest bedroom and so not increase the overall bedroom count, and they doubted an extension was feasible because of foundation concerns, inadequate cavity walls and the need to remove the kitchen/bathroom roof for steelwork for a prolonged period; the father disputed that the combined loft and first‑floor extension would cause a net loss of usable bedroom space.
OT2 later asked surveyors to explore reconfiguring existing floorspace to create a fourth bedroom; surveyors rejected this on the grounds that the resulting room sizes would fall below “decent homes” standards, one room would lack natural light and ventilation, and they maintained concerns.
At the start of November 2023, the Council emailed the father saying it did not consider it feasible to provide the needed adaptations, gave no written reasons, but offered a meeting to discuss the decision and suggested a possible relocation grant.
In January 2024, the Council wrote again, now stating it did not consider it “reasonably practicable” to adapt the home to meet E’s needs and providing more information on relocation grants.
The father then complained to the Council in February 2024 about the delay, communication, OT1’s encouragement, the lack of reasons for refusing a grant, and the inadequacy of the relocation grant to fund a move to a suitable property in the same area.
The Council replied around April 2024, acknowledging the delay in deciding on Disabled Facilities Grant eligibility, defending OT2’s ongoing contact, and explaining its technical objections: OT1 had noted the need for an extension, surveyors had set out the construction difficulties, and the Council would not support adaptations that reduced bedroom sizes below “decent homes” standards. Dissatisfied, the father escalated the complaint in September 2024, giving more detail about his contact history, referring to neighbours’ two‑storey extensions, asserting that the property could be adapted, and arguing that he understood the Council could provide top‑up funding beyond the mandatory grant; he repeated that relocation funding would not allow the family to stay locally in a suitably adapted home.
In its final complaint response in November 2024, the Council again acknowledged excessive delay and now accepted there were gaps in communication, that OT1 had inadvertently raised expectations, and that it had not adequately explained its refusal to award a Disabled Facilities Grant. It apologised and offered £300 for distress, time and trouble, while a senior officer now said the works were not “reasonable or practicable” because their cost would significantly exceed the £30,000 mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant ceiling, citing technical complexity and extensive remodelling needs to the extension, foundations, cavity walls, insulation and roof structure, and indicating there were no “exceptional grounds” for discretionary top‑up funding, although the relocation grant offer remained open.
When asked to clarify, the Council said surveyors estimated the second‑storey extension would cost between £70,000 and £95,000 based on experience, but no itemised breakdown of costs existed at that point.
What was found
The Ombudsman found the Council at fault for excessive delay in dealing with the father’s request for Disabled Facilities Grant support, far exceeding guidance timescales, and for poor and intermittent communication that left him uninformed for long periods and initially without reasons for refusal.
The Ombudsman also found legal fault in the way the Council refused to consider a mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant on the basis of overall cost, before progressing a full application, and in its failure to produce a detailed cost breakdown, follow the staged statutory/grant guidance process properly, and meaningfully consider discretionary funding options and children’s services involvement under its own policy and relevant guidance.
The law has been established to be that the cost of works is not relevant when deciding if they are “reasonable and practicable” to carry out. The test of whether it is ‘reasonable or practicable’ to award a DFG is one that looks at the age and condition of the home. Government guidance explains that stage 3 of the DFG process is to move from “identification of the relevant works to submission of the formal grant application”. It cannot properly refuse a grant until Stage 4, when the applicant has made an application and it has details of design and costs. That cannot happen if the Council does not properly encourage an application and provide the design and costings, where that is part of its surveyor’s role. Well-known case law (see McKeown, R (On the application of) v London Borough of Islington [2020]) has held that:
- Assessing what is “necessary and appropriate” only covers the specific purpose for which the grant application is made. A council cannot refuse a grant because the applicant has not asked for all the adaptations they might want or need.
- A housing authority cannot refuse a grant for work costing more than £30,000 because the applicant has failed to confirm how they will fund the balance. That is the applicant’s responsibility. The council should set out clearly whether they expect the applicant to fund any of the work. It should also explain that it can only make the grant payment when the work is completed satisfactorily.
- If the council considers that the cost of adaptations will exceed £30,000, it must provide a breakdown of the cost.
Where adaptations will cost more than £30,000, councils have discretion to provide more funding if they have a locally published Housing Assistance Policy (made under the Regulatory Reform Order 2002). Government guidance says: “a decision to award a DFG grant above the existing £30,000 limit […] should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the impact that rejecting it may have on the ability for the applicant to proceed without the additional funding in place”.
The investigation also considered national guidance and the “Foundations” high‑cost home adaptations protocol, which recommends structured handling of adaptations exceeding the DFG limit and involvement of children’s services under Children Act 1989 section 17 in high‑cost cases involving disabled children.
In assessing events against the five key DFG stages in government guidance, the Ombudsman noted that from first contact in August 2022 to the Council’s refusal around November 2023–January 2024, about 15 months elapsed, far beyond the suggested timescales even for complex cases and before completion of a full stage‑3 to stage‑4 grant application path. The Council accepted that delay and communication gaps caused the father uncertainty, distress, avoidable frustration and time and trouble, including putting off other house repairs and decoration while he waited to know if major adaptations would happen.
The Ombudsman then focused on the central adaptation decision, accepting that works would likely exceed the £30,000 grant ceiling but finding the Council had made legal and procedural errors.
Further, the Council did not produce a detailed cost breakdown and instead relied on rough estimates, and by discouraging or refusing to progress a formal grant application before designs and full costings were prepared, it effectively blocked stage‑3 and stage‑4 of the prescribed DFG process. It also failed to properly consider discretionary funding routes within its renewal policy, including loans, grants, relocation support and “special case” mechanisms, and did not bring children’s services into decision‑making despite E being a disabled child.
The Ombudsman considered but did not need to reach a final view on the Council’s reliance on “decent homes” bedroom size standards for an owner‑occupied property when rejecting OT2’s internal reconfiguration proposal, though noted doubts about the appropriateness of importing those standards and accepted the surveyors’ concerns about tiny rooms and lack of natural light and ventilation. Having already found fault in delay, communication and the core legal approach, including improper refusal at the pre‑application stage and opaque discretionary funding consideration, the Ombudsman concluded it was unnecessary to determine whether the rejection of OT2’s sub‑division proposal was itself to be seen as fault.
These faults caused injustice through prolonged uncertainty, distress, frustration, avoidable time and trouble, and practical consequences for the family, who remained in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation with the disabled child still sharing his parents’ bedroom and no adapted bathroom upstairs. The Ombudsman considered the Council’s initial offer of £300 inadequate, recommending and securing an increased £1,250 symbolic payment and concrete actions including a fresh multi‑disciplinary reconsideration of adaptation options and a properly conducted Disabled Facilities Grant decision, together with policy reform and scrutiny measures aimed at preventing recurrence and improving handling of high‑cost adaptations, discretionary funding decisions and relocation grant information.
The Council’s faults meant the father could not be sure what the outcome would have been if a lawful process had been followed, and although there were strong indications that any solution would still have required substantial discretionary funding above £30,000, the Ombudsman recognised real uncertainty as a further injustice.
To remedy the injustice, the Ombudsman recorded that the Council agreed, within 20 working days, to provide a further apology in line with LGSCO remedies guidance and to increase its symbolic payment to the father from £300 to £1,250, broken down as £500 for distress due to delay and poor communication, £250 for complaint‑related time and trouble, and £500 for distress caused by flawed decision‑making.
It also agreed to form a new multi‑disciplinary team including an occupational therapist, surveyor and children’s services representative (ideally officers not previously involved) to revisit how the property might be adapted, conduct a further survey and feasibility study, develop an indicative budget, complete and decide a Disabled Facilities Grant application with the father within three months of the team’s formation, and explore alternative funding sources where costs exceed the DFG limit, meeting with him before finalising its decision.
The Ombudsman noted that, if the Council ultimately still refused to award a Disabled Facilities Grant or fund the difference between a DFG and adaptation costs, the father could return directly to the Ombudsman without first using the Council’s complaint procedure again. In addition, the Council committed to wider service improvements: within three months, to adopt a specific policy or protocol for high‑cost adaptations above the DFG ceiling; by March 2026, to report to the relevant councillor scrutiny committee on this complaint, policy concerns and service timescales against the five‑step model, including how to reduce delays; and by June 2026, to review and clarify the housing renewal policy, including maximum discretionary loan, grant and relocation grant amounts and how they operate, and to provide evidence of compliance with all agreed actions.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The omissions in this report’s analysis of law mainly concern how public law principles and community care law constrain councils that rely heavily on cost or internal policy when refusing major adaptations for disabled people. Community care law emphasises that once eligible needs are identified, they must be met appropriately and lawfully; cost can shape how, but not whether, those needs are met, and blanket reliance on internal ceilings or informal standards risks fettering discretion where case‑by‑case judgment is required.
DFG law is also based on public law. The report acknowledges that refusing a mandatory grant on cost grounds was legally flawed, but it does not fully explore the wider duty, rooted in public law, to separate the statutory test for a mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant, given the cap of £30,000 from the distinct, discretionary question of whether and how to deploy additional powers or children’s services funding in high‑cost cases involving disabled children.
There were significant weaknesses in the current housing renewal policy, which had not reviewed for nearly a decade. The policy did not make clear if the Council can provide a loan to top-up DFG funding more than £5,000 although it said elsewhere that it can loan up to the value of £30,000). It provided little detail on the terms of any loan. It did not explain if there was any ceiling on discretionary grant funding nor how it would decide on whether to offer a grant, or a loan, neither or both. The policy (and its complaint response) referred to the existence of a panel which may decide such applications but nothing for the DFG applicant about who sits on the panel nor how to ask it to consider discretionary funding. The Foundations protocol provided a clear step-by-step process on how councils can consider awarding grants above the DFG threshold: the Council had not taken any such an approach in this case, and its process lacked involvement by its Children’s Services in decision making, which was a significant omission.
The discussion of the Council’s use of “decent homes” bedroom standards for an owner‑occupied property is left at the level of technical concern, rather than tested against public law requirements to consider relevant factors, disregard irrelevant ones and avoid importing housing‑policy benchmarks as if they were hard legal limits in disability adaptations decisions. Public law principles, as applied in community care case law, show that local standards or guidance cannot be treated as inflexible rules; authorities must still weigh the individual’s circumstances, well-being impact and the practical consequences of leaving a disabled child sharing a bedroom with parents before rejecting technically workable options simply because they do not align with generic space standards.
The report notes these doubts but stops short of analysing whether the Council’s approach crossed the line into fettering discretion or irrationality in the community care sense, which would have given clearer guidance for future cases.
Repeated internal discussion, shifting rationales and the lack of a clear, co‑produced exploration of alternatives suggest not just administrative inefficiency but a deeper public law problem about how decisions were made and communicated; drawing that link more clearly would underline that lawful process is part of the right to support, not an optional extra.
The report’s references to children’s services involvement under section 17 are accurate but under‑developed, given community care law’s expectation that disabled children’s housing and care needs are considered holistically across education, social care and housing functions. A fuller application of public law principles would have asked whether the Council had properly coordinated its duties across departments, or whether the father was effectively left to navigate separate funding streams without a clear, joined‑up explanation of what statutory routes had been considered and why they were rejected.
Community care law underscores that where unavoidable limits exist, councils must be candid about them, explain how they have balanced competing duties and record why particular options were rejected, so that families can make informed choices, seek advocacy where needed and, if necessary, challenge decisions that fall short of what the law requires.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Kingston Upon Hull City Council (24 022 114) report. If you are affected by the issues in this report, please consider asking a free, one-off question, anonymously, at a level of principle, here. Our experts’ response will give you an opinion which may then help you and the broader community, when posted.
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