Summary: We found fault with the Council taking 18 months too long to complete the works for Ms X’s Disability Facilities Grant application. The Council agreed to apologise to Ms X and pay her £3,750 for the avoidable distress, difficulty and uncertainty it caused.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained the Council delayed processing her Disabled Facilities Grant application and installing recommended equipment.
2. Ms X says this caused distress and impacted on her health and quality of life.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

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What I have and have not investigated

6. While some of the period in Ms X’s complaint is late, there is good reason to investigate events back to March 2023. This is because Ms X expected the Council was taking actions and there are notes of contacts between March 2023 and 2025. So, it was reasonable for Ms X to think she did not need to complain to us sooner.

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered evidence provided by Ms X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
8. Ms X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision before I made my final decision.

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What I found

Rules and regulations

Disabled Facilities Grants/Adaptations

9. 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 the work is necessary, meets the disabled person’s needs, and is reasonable and practicable.
10. Relevant councils must promote ‘wellbeing’ when carrying out care and support functions. Wellbeing includes the suitability of living accommodation. The Care Act 2014 recognises suitable accommodation as one way of meeting care and support needs. Prevention is critical to the Care Act and home adaptation is an example of secondary prevention.
11. In March 2022 the government issued non-statutory guidance “Disabled facilities Grant (DFG) Delivery: Guidance for local authorities in England.
12. This guidance advises councils in England on how they can effectively and efficiently deliver DFG funded adaptations to best serve the needs of local older and disabled people. It brings together and sets out in one place existing policy frameworks, legislative duties and powers, together with recommended best practice, to help councils provide an adaptation service to disabled tenants and residents in their area.
13. The 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.
• 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.
• Stage 5: Approval of grant to completion of works. The works are arranged and carried out and the necessary quality checks made.
14. A council should decide a grant application as soon as reasonably practicable. In addition, the timescales for moving through the stages will depend on the urgency and complexity of the works required. The guidance gives the following timescales:
• Urgent and simple works – 55 working days.
• Non-urgent and simple works – 130 working days.
• Urgent and complex works – 130 days.
• Non-urgent and complex works – 180 working days.
15. We expect councils to consider whether interim equipment or temporary works should be provided when it will take them a long time to secure a permanent solution.

What happened

16. In March 2023, Ms X made an enquiry of the Council for an assessment by an Occupational Therapist because she was struggling to get up and down stairs. The Council made a referral to its Occupational Therapist team for assessment the following day.
17. By the end of 2023, the Occupational Therapist completed an assessment of Ms X. The Occupational Therapist confirmed Ms X was eligible for support from the Council because she had difficulty and pain using stairs. The Occupational Therapist proposed installation of a stairlift which Ms X agreed to. The Council classed this Disability Facilities Grant application as non-urgent and simple.
18. Ms X says she did not get any updates from the Council about installation of the stairlift and, therefore, needed to consider other options such as moving properties to meet her needs as her condition worsened throughout 2024.
19. In December 2024, Ms X told she may be moving properties to a one-level property. Ms X asked the Council to place installation of the stairlift on hold.
20. Ms X made a formal complaint to the Council in January 2025 about the failure to install the stairlift. Ms X said an Occupational Therapist assessed her as needing a stairlift in 2023, but the Council had not installed this so far. Ms X said her health had deteriorated and she now had to consider moving to a one-level property.
21. At the end of January 2025, Ms X told the Council she no longer intended to move and asked the Council to install the stairlift.
22. The Council provided a Stage one complaint response. The Council said:
• It had a nine-month long waiting list for caseworker allocation for Disability Facilities Grant applications.
• It placed Ms X’s grant application on hold following her contact in December 2024.
• Since Ms X’s contact to confirm she needed installation of the stairlift it was seeking agreement from her landlord and would contact Ms X when it completes this action.
23. The Council approved Ms X’s Disability Facilities Grant in March 2025 and installed the stairlift.
24. Ms X sought consideration of her complaint at Stage two in March 2025 about the delays in the stairlift installation. Ms X said she had been unable to walk upstairs for the last four months.
25. In April 2025, the Council provided its Stage two complaint response. The Council accepted there was an unacceptable delay in installation of the stairlift and said this was caused by a long waiting list. The Council offered £360 for Ms X’s delay and advised it had made improvements to its service to address the delays it had been experiencing.

Analysis

26. Since the Council classified Ms X’s Disability Facilities Grant as non-urgent and simple works it had 130 days to install the stairlift from first contact. Ms X’s first contact was in March 2023 meaning it had until July 2023 to complete installation of the stairlift. The Council did not complete this until March 2025. This is a delay of 20 months outside the guidance.
27. Within this 20-month delay, Ms X asked the Council to place her application on hold from December 2024 to the end of January 2025. This means the delay caused by the fault of the Council was 18 months.
28. The Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies says we would consider a symbolic remedy of £150 to £350 per month for injustice caused where a council’s delay has deprived someone of adaptations which would have increased their independence and improved their daily life. The exact payment depends on a person’s situation and the impact on them.
29. Having considered Ms X’s individual circumstances, I consider the Council should pay Ms X £200 per month for the delay caused by the Council up to the end of January 2025. This is because Ms X was still able to navigate stairs to her bathroom and bedroom upstairs but was experiencing pain and difficulty doing so. It was only in December 2024 that Ms X told the Council her situation had deteriorated to the degree that she needed to consider a one-level property and Ms X placed the application on hold. Since the removal of this hold at the end of January 2025, the Council’s delay continued and the impact on Ms X was greater justifying a higher award of £300 per month. This was because Ms X was close to no longer being able to access her bathroom and bedroom causing not only extra pain and discomfort but also uncertainty and worry. The Council made no interim adaptations to Ms X’s property throughout.
30. The Council advised in its Stage one complaint response it had a nine-month waiting list for caseworker allocation for Disability Facilities Grant applications. The Council outlined it made service improvements to address this delay which has included policy changes, enhancing discretionary grant offering and changes to the application process. The Council also engaged with third party organisations to try to improve its way of working. As of December 2025, the Council had reduced its waiting times with the longest application on its waiting list being 24 days old. The Council’s service improvements have already addressed the underlying issues in Ms X’s complaint. I do not consider further service improvements are needed.

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Action

31. Within one month of the Ombudsman’s final decision the Council should:
• Provide Ms X with an apology. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended in my findings.
• Pay her £3,750 for the avoidable distress, difficulty and uncertainty caused to Ms X by the Council’s delay outside the guidance timescales in completing the works from Ms X’s Disability Facilities Grant application.
32. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

33. There was fault leading to injustice. As the Council has agreed to my recommendations, I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman