Disabled Facilities Grants: Social Rented Housing
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has considered making Disabled Facilities Grants available to social housing tenants due to the long delays they are facing for adaptations due to the depletion of the Housing Revenue Account.
Answered by Alison McGovern
Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide Disabled Facilities Grants within statutory timescales to eligible council and other social housing tenants in the same way as any other applicant.
Government funding for the Disabled Facilities Grant funds adaptations for owner occupiers, private tenants, or tenants of private registered providers (housing associations). Local housing authorities with a Housing Revenue Account (HRA) should self-fund home adaptations for council tenants through this account. A provision was made for expenditure in the Housing Revenue Account as a ‘Disabled Facilities Allowance’ in the 2012-13 self-financing settlement, alongside information on how to calculate it in subsequent years.
The Government recognises that changes in rent policy, inflationary pressures and increased costs for investing in existing stock since 2012 have led to strain on Housing Revenue Accounts. We have taken decisive steps to help councils overcome these challenges and are supporting councils to invest in new and existing stock through a range of measures, including the new ten-year rent settlement with a convergence mechanism, £1 billion in building safety funding, access to the £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme and access to the Warm Homes Social Housing Fund.
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