Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential benefits of extending VAT relief for home disability adaptions to self-installed adaptions when a recognised need for the home modifications has been identified by an individual's professional support team.

VAT has been designed as a broad-based tax on consumption, and the twenty per cent standard rate applies to the vast majority of goods and services. While there are exceptions to the standard rate, these have always been strictly limited by both legal and fiscal considerations.

One such exception is the VAT relief for items which have been designed solely for use by a disabled person, which benefit from a VAT zero-rate. Self-installation of home modifications which meet this criteria will benefit from the relief, however any general purpose items will be subject to VAT at the standard rate. This boundary ensures that goods and services which are objectively the same do not have different VAT treatments, enabling HMRC and businesses to determine with confidence what is, and is not, eligible for VAT relief.

Given this, although the Government keeps all taxes under review, there are no plans to change the VAT treatment of self-installed home adaptations