Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendations.

Councillor Bibby introduced the report and explained that the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 placed a mandatory duty on Local Authorities to provide Disabled Facilities Grants (DFG).   The grant was available for adapting or providing facilities for a disabled person in a dwelling.

The Chief Officer (Housing and Communities) explained that due to the current climate since Brexit and Covid-19, there had been an increase in costs in the construction industry.  Although a new Discretionary Policy was developed last year, it had been recognised that a review of the policy was required to ensure the needs of the customer were still being met.

The current policy had an agreed limit of £10,000 for non means testing of medium sized adaptations.  That discretional grant was created to meet the request of Welsh Government (WG) in the revised Housing Adaptations Service Standards.

However, due to the current climate and rise in costs in the construction industry, it seemed unreasonable as the majority of medium adaptations could not be delivered within that cost limit.  Therefore, to fully remove the means test for all medium sized adaptations would not only meet WG guidelines, but would also be more equitable and consistent.

As it was a Discretional Grant, it would still be at the discretion of the DFG Manager to determine whether to means test a case or not particularly if the works were complex in nature, resulting in a combination of medium adaptations which were comparable to the cost of large scale works around £20,000 or above.

RESOLVED:

(a)       That the updated Disabled Facility Grant policy be supported and the ongoing work to improve the service be noted;

(b)       That the amendment to Appendix 2 in the policy for removal of the means test for medium sized adaptations be noted; and

(c)        That the changes to the Land Charges be noted, whereby they now only apply to large adaptations in-line with Welsh Government Revised Housing Standards, previously they applied to any adaptation over £20,000, be noted.