Can you get a Disabled Facilities Grant if you have savings?
Yes. Savings of £6,000 or less are ignored completely. The test of resources looks at your household income and at savings above £6,000, and it decides how much you contribute, not whether you qualify. Disabled children under 18 and landlords applying for a disabled tenant are not means tested at all.
Checked 7 September 2026 against GOV.UK guidance on what you will get. Figures apply in England.
The means test is the part of a Disabled Facilities Grant application that stops people applying, usually because they assume savings rule them out. They mostly do not. The test decides your contribution towards the work, and for a stairlift, which is one of the cheaper adaptations the grant covers, a contribution is often nil.
What the test looks at
The formal name is the test of resources. It considers the income and savings of the disabled person and their partner, not the whole extended household, and not adult children living at home.
- Savings up to £6,000 are disregarded. They are not counted at all.
- Savings above £6,000 are treated as producing a notional income, which is added to your assessed income.
- Income is compared against an allowance based on your circumstances, and if it is at or below that allowance your contribution is nil.
- The grant does not affect your other benefits, which GOV.UK states directly.
Who skips the test entirely
Two groups are exempt, and both are frequently missed.
A grant for a child under 18 is assessed without taking the parents’ income or savings into account. A family with substantial savings can still receive a full grant for a child’s adaptation.
A landlord applying to adapt a property for a disabled tenant is assessed without their own income and savings being counted. If you rent, this is the route to raise with your landlord, and our page on stairlifts in rented homes covers the consent side.
Households receiving qualifying means tested benefits are passported through the financial assessment rather than going through the income calculation. Ask your council which benefits it treats as passporting, because the list is set nationally but applied locally.
What the grant is worth
| Nation | Maximum grant | Means tested? |
|---|---|---|
| England | £30,000 | Yes, for adults |
| Wales | £36,000 | Yes, for adults |
| Northern Ireland | £35,000 | Yes, for adults |
| Scotland | Scheme of Assistance, no DFG | Varies by council |
A stairlift costs a small fraction of any of those ceilings. Our price data puts a straight stairlift at £1,500 to £3,500 fitted and a curved one at £3,500 to £10,000, so the ceiling is almost never the constraint. The constraint is the assessed contribution and the council’s waiting list.
Working out roughly where you stand
You will not get an exact figure without applying, because the allowances are set out in regulations and depend on your household. What you can do beforehand is check three things.
- Are you in an exempt group? A child under 18, or a landlord applying for a tenant. If so, savings are irrelevant.
- Are you on a passporting benefit? If so, your contribution is normally nil.
- Are your savings above £6,000? If not, savings play no part at all and the assessment is on income alone.
Our who qualifies page has the eligibility side, and the stairlift cost calculator gives you a price band to weigh a contribution against.
If the grant does not cover everything
A shortfall is common where the quote exceeds what the council will approve, or where your assessed contribution is high. There are three routes worth trying in order.
Ask whether your council operates a discretionary top-up. Many do, under their housing assistance policy, and they rarely advertise it. Our page on council DFG top-ups covers how to ask and what to ask for.
Check what your council has to spend. Allocations are published each year and they differ sharply. We list every English council’s DFG allocation for 2026 to 27 against last year, and 139 of the 296 councils that deliver the grant had their funding held at exactly last year’s figure.
Then look at charities and at the cost of the work itself. Our pages on shortfall options and charities that help set out both. And if you end up paying, a stairlift for a chronically sick or disabled person is zero rated for VAT, which removes 20 per cent before you start.
Sources
- GOV.UK, Disabled Facilities Grants: what you will get, read 7 September 2026
- GOV.UK, Disabled Facilities Grants: overview, read 7 September 2026
- Stairlift grants in the UK
- How to apply for a DFG
- Can you get a stairlift on the NHS?
- DFG funding by council 2026-27
- How long an application takes
