Disability adaptations in rented homes: your rights

Disabled and renting? You may have the right to ask your landlord for adaptations: changes that make the home safer and easier to live in. Here is the legal position, what landlords must and must not do, and where the money can come from.

Can I ask my landlord to make adaptations?

Yes. Under the Equality Act 2010, landlords must make reasonable adjustments for disabled tenants. For physical changes to the building the duty is narrower than for other adjustments.

For physical adaptations, ramps, grab rails, wider doorways, stairlifts, the position is: you have the right to ask, and the landlord must not refuse consent unreasonably. Social tenants have their own, stronger rules.

What does "not refuse consent unreasonably" mean?

A private landlord must weigh an adaptation request fairly. Refusing a reasonable adaptation that would help a disabled person live there, without good reason, may be unlawful discrimination.

What a landlord can fairly weigh:

• Whether the works are structurally possible
• Whether they would badly disrupt the building or the neighbours
• Whether you agree to put things back at the end of the tenancy, for changes that can be reversed

What a landlord cannot do is refuse just because they dislike change. A refusal with no explanation, or one based on the disability itself, is likely discrimination.

What about social housing tenants?

Social landlords, councils and housing associations, carry a stronger duty to help, and can often apply for Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) on a tenant's behalf to fund major works.

A social landlord should hold a clear adaptations policy. If yours ignores a fair request, that can ground a formal complaint.

What is a Disabled Facilities Grant?

A DFG is a means-tested council grant for adapting a disabled person's home. It can cover a wide range of works:

• Ramps and level access
• Bathroom and toilet adaptations
• Stair lifts and through-floor lifts
• Wider doorways
• Heating and lighting changes for people with sensory impairments

Owners and tenants can both get a DFG. For tenants, the landlord's consent is usually a condition of the grant, and the council generally approaches them when you apply.

Top amounts and means-test thresholds vary across England.

Does my landlord have to pay for adaptations themselves?

Not always. The duty is not to pay for every adaptation themselves. It is to not refuse consent unreasonably, and to cooperate where a grant, or you, pays for the works.

Where a DFG or the tenant funds the works, the landlord's job is mainly to let them go ahead, and to discuss putting things back at the end of the tenancy where that applies.

What if the landlord refuses?

Refused a fair adaptation request?

1. Put the request in writing and ask for their reasons
2. If the refusal has no good reason, make a formal complaint
3. Contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) for discrimination advice
4. Apply for a DFG through the council. That can bring the landlord to the table.
5. Get advice from a disability rights or housing charity

Refusing adaptations a disabled tenant needs can amount to discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, and it can be pursued in court or at a tribunal.

When should I contact Support for Tenants?

We help tenants with housing disrepair claims. Where a landlord's failure to maintain the home makes your disability harder to live with, a broken lift, lasting damp harming your breathing, heating left broken, that can form part of a claim. Call us.

Call us on 0800 030 4669. No upfront cost. You only pay if you win, and the fee comes out of the compensation, not your pocket. If you don't win, you pay nothing.

Sources

• Equality Act 2010 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (Disabled Facilities Grants) (legislation.gov.uk)