Disabled people trapped waiting years for vital home adaptations

As children, Rianna and Lauren Campbell-Thompson shared a bedroom. Lauren took the top bunk and Rianna, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, took the bottom. Eventually Rianna moved to the room across the landing. It’s a distance of a few feet, but one Rianna cannot cross – the landing is too narrow for her wheelchair.

Rianna has not seen her twin’s room since about 2003. Instead, Lauren shows her photos.

A lift connects Rianna’s bedroom to the living room. But the rest of the three-bed terrace in Bromley that has been her family’s home for her entire life – the twins are now 28 – is cut off from her. She loves to bake, but cannot get inside the tiny kitchen because the doorway is tucked away in a corner. To wash in the wetroom, Rianna has to travel down in the lift naked before Lauren and their mum, Lorna Campbell, get her onto a shower trolley and wheel her inside. Then they must get her upstairs again to be dressed.

The family needs £100,000 to adapt the house into a proper home for Rianna. That money, Lauren said, would cover removing the lift and putting up a new wall to move Rianna’s bedroom downstairs, making the kitchen big enough for her to use and installing accessible equipment, and adding a new hoist.

In 2019 Lorna began an application for a disabled facilities grant (DFG) – the only grant available for home adaptations in England. It is a legal requirement for councils to financially support applicants who meet the DFG eligibility criteria, but there are limits to this support.

In England, the maximum amount councils can give each applicant is £30,000; in Wales, it’s £36,000; in Northern Ireland, £25,000. The cap has not been raised in England since 2008, despite recommendations four years ago to raise it to take account of inflation and “substantial changes to house prices, benefits, retirement ages”.

Lauren, who works as a part-time care worker, knew the grant would cover only a fraction of the cost of the work needed. She launched a £20,000 crowdfunding campaign and has poured years of effort into it for her sister’s sake. “It’s been quite hard to keep pushing on, especially finding ideas to help get the fundraiser moving … It’s quite embarrassing as well, especially showing the disrepair of the house, but it’s honestly the only way.”

And she knows she is not alone. “I have access to a lot of accessible housing pages on Facebook and everybody’s having to crowdfund the excess because with Brexit and inflation, everything’s gone up, but the DFG price hasn’t shifted. Most people’s quotes come in way over the £30,000 budget.”