Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Government grants statistics 2020 to 2021, published on 31 March 2022, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Disabled Facilities Grants.

The Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) supports around 50,000 older and disabled people in England each year to adapt their homes to make them safe and suitable for their needs. Adaptations funded through the DFG can reduce emergency admissions to hospital, speed up a return home following a hospital stay and delay, or even prevent, the need for costly residential care in future.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) collects voluntary local authority-level data returns, including information on local DFG delivery, via its DELTA system. Raw data from local authorities is analysed by Foundations, the DLUHC funded national body for DFGs and home improvement agencies. The 2021-22 report on local DFG delivery is available online at the following link:

www.foundations.uk.com/library/dfg-performance/

There is good evidence of the impact and effectiveness of housing adaptations generically, and the DFG specifically. For example, Public Health England’s falls prevention toolkit (2018) compared the impact of different interventions on preventing falls, including exercise classes and home adaptations. It found that adaptations produce significantly higher returns on investment with £1 of investment in home assessment and modification saving £3.17 on health and care costs. If quality of life gains for the individual are considered, savings rise to £7.34 per £1 spent.