Can you get a stairlift on the NHS?
No. The NHS does not supply stairlifts. Your local council does, through a Disabled Facilities Grant, after a free assessment by an occupational therapist. The council must provide aids and minor adaptations costing £1,000 or less free of charge, and a stairlift costs more than that, so it goes through the grant instead.
Checked 7 September 2026 against NHS home adaptations guidance and regulation 3 of the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014.
People search for a free stairlift and for an NHS stairlift, and get sent round in circles. The short version is that the two systems do different jobs. The NHS assesses you. The council pays. Neither of them hands out stairlifts on request, and the route between them has some rules worth knowing before you start.
What the NHS actually provides
The NHS has no stairlift budget and no stairlift service. What it does provide, at no cost to you, is the clinical side of the process.
- An occupational therapist visits your home, watches how you manage the stairs and writes up what you need. The assessment is free, and you can ask for one through your council or on GOV.UK.
- If you are coming out of hospital, intermediate care and reablement support are free for the first six weeks. That can include equipment while you get back on your feet, though not usually a permanent stairlift.
- A GP letter, a consultant’s report or a physiotherapy note is often what makes a grant application stick. All of that comes from the NHS side and costs you nothing.
An occupational therapist working for the council does the same assessment. Which badge they wear does not change your entitlement.
The £1,000 rule, and why a stairlift falls outside it
There is a genuine free-equipment rule in English law, and it is narrower than most people hope. Under regulation 3 of the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, a council must not charge for community equipment, defined as an aid or a minor adaptation to property, and an adaptation counts as minor if it costs £1,000 or less.
Grab rails, a banister, a concrete ramp, a second handrail, lighting that comes on at the door: all of these usually land under £1,000, and the council pays. A stairlift does not. The cheapest reconditioned straight stairlift fitted is above that line, and our own price data puts a new straight model at £1,500 to £3,500 fitted. So a stairlift is not free equipment. It is a grant application.
So who gets a free stairlift?
People whose Disabled Facilities Grant covers the whole cost. That is what a free stairlift is in practice. The grant is worth up to £30,000 in England, and a stairlift sits far below the ceiling, so the question is never whether the grant is big enough. It is whether you qualify and what you are assessed as being able to contribute.
Three groups are treated more generously than the rest:
- Disabled children under 18, whose parents’ income and savings are not taken into account at all.
- Landlords applying on behalf of a disabled tenant, whose income and savings are not taken into account either.
- Households on qualifying means tested benefits, who are passported through the financial test rather than assessed on income.
Everybody else goes through the test of resources, which looks at household income and at savings above £6,000. Our guide to the DFG means test and savings sets out what counts and what is ignored.
The route, in order
- Ask your council for an occupational therapy assessment. You can do this yourself, and you do not need a GP referral, though medical evidence helps.
- Get the OT recommendation in writing, because the grant is built on it.
- Apply for the Disabled Facilities Grant through the housing side of your council. Our step by step guide to applying covers the paperwork.
- Complete the test of resources, unless you are in one of the exempt groups.
- Then wait. The council has six months to decide once it has a valid application, and works must be finished within twelve months of approval. Our timeline page has the realistic version.
Two things worth checking before you apply
First, how much money your own council has. Allocations are set nationally each year and they are not the same everywhere. We publish every English council’s DFG allocation for 2026 to 27 next to last year’s, and 139 of the 296 councils that run the grant were frozen at exactly last year’s figure.
Second, whether your council tops the grant up from its own budget. Some do. That is often the difference between a shortfall you have to cover and one you do not, and our page on council DFG top-ups explains how to ask.
If you are turned down
A refusal is not the end of the road. You can ask for the decision in writing and for the reasons, ask for a review, and go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman if the council has taken an unreasonable time or failed to follow its own policy. Charities also fund adaptations where the grant does not reach, and our page on charities that help with stairlifts lists the ones that take direct applications.
If you decide to buy instead, the VAT relief is worth having. A stairlift for a person who is chronically sick or disabled is zero rated, which takes 20 per cent off the price on its own.
Sources
- NHS, home adaptations, read 7 September 2026
- The Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, regulation 3
- GOV.UK, Disabled Facilities Grants, read 7 September 2026
- Stairlift grants in the UK
- The DFG means test and savings
- Who qualifies for a DFG
- DFG funding by council 2026-27
- What happens at an OT assessment
