Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, where there is no separate agreement between an upper tier authority and a lower tier authority to use part of any disabled facilities grant funding for social care capital projects, what proportion of disabled facilities grant funding paid to the upper tier authority should be passed from that authority to the lower tier authority.

The Government is committed to helping people with disabilities live safely and independently in their homes, and has invested over a billion pounds in the Disabled Facilities Grant since 2010.

Local housing authorities, which in two-tier areas are the lower tier authorities, are under a statutory duty to provide adaptations to the homes of those people who qualify for a Disabled Facilities Grant. Government wants to ensure that lower tier authorities have the resources they need to meet this duty. Our expectation is that the Disabled Facilities Grant funding is passed in full to lower tier authorities, unless there is local agreement between the upper and lower tiers to contribute a portion of the funding to other social care capital projects. Funding allocations for local housing authorities are set out in the grant determination letter sent to both upper and lower tier authorities when the Disabled Facilities Grant money is paid each year.

The Disabled Facilities Grant is part of the Better Care Fund, and the Better Care Fund Policy Framework for 2016 to 2017 makes this expectation clear: ‘As set out in Better Care Fund technical guidance, for 2016-17 authorities in two-tier areas will have to allocate Disabled Facilities Grant funding to their respective housing authorities from the pooled budget to enable them to continue to meet their statutory duty to provide adaptations to the homes of disabled people’.

This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-care-fund-how-it-will-work-in-2016-to-2017