Housing grants

Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant

A Mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) is a means-tested grant which helps with the cost of essential housing adaptations to enable disabled people to live independently in and around their home. A grant up to a maximum of £30,000 can be given. It is available to:

housing association tenants
private tenants
home owners

If you are a housing association tenant who needs minor adaptations such as grab rails, you can request this work directly from your landlord.

What is a Disabled Facilities Grant?

What home adaptations does a Disabled Facilities Grant cover?

Adaptations range from ramps, stair lifts and level access showers to building a ground floor bathroom extension.

Apply for a Disability Facilities Grant

Grant assistance can only be considered once the council has received a referral from an occupational therapist, so the first step is to contact the relevant helpdesk below and arrange for an occupational therapist assessment to see if adaptations are necessary to meet the disabled person’s needs.

Integrated Community Teams

Telephone: 0300 421 7944
Email: ictreferrals.foresttns@ghc.nhs.uk
Website: https://www.ghc.nhs.uk/our-teams-and-services/ict/

Children and families for disabled children up to 19 years

Telephone: 0300 421 6988
Email: Children's helpdesk
Website: https://www.ghc.nhs.uk/our-teams-and-services/childrens-occupational-therapy/

Following the assessment the occupational therapist will send the council a referral if they think adaptations are required to meet the medical needs of the disabled person.

The grant officer at the council will then contact the applicant to start the application process.

To find out more about DFGs and how to apply, visit:

https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/disabilities/disabled-facilities-grants/

Relocation grant

In some cases, if adaptations are too costly or not feasible, we may need to consider rehousing to a more suitable property. There is a discretionary grant available from the council that could help with relocation costs and/or purchasing costs of a new property. For more information about rehousing to a housing association property visit the Homeseeker Plus website.

Warm and Well

Forest of Dean District Council, along with the six other councils in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire, works in partnership with Seven Wye Energy Agency (SWEA) to run the Warm and Well project, offering free energy advice to residents.

For details click here: Warm and Well Scheme

Funding for Community-led Housing

The Government’s Community Housing Fund is managed by Homes England. The bidding for this grant has finished. On the 30th January 2021 the government announced the renewal of the Community Housing Fund for 2021/2022 to support community led housing. The Community Housing Fund will provide revenue funding aimed at supporting community-based organisations to progress opportunities for local house building projects and prepare bids to access grant funding from the Affordable Homes Programme. We hope further information will be available shortly.

The Community Led Homes website has a comprehensive list of funding sources for Community-led housing.

We have a small amount of funding to support groups in the Forest of Dean with their Community-led housing projects. There are two grants available:

the start-up grant of up to £1000, for groups to become established in their community and incorporate into a formal organisation
pre-development grant (up to £10,000) for established groups who are progressing their housing project to planning application stage