Published 3 November 2026. Analysis by Jacob Whitmore, Look Into Research, from ONS consumer and construction price indices. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a credit and link. No affiliate links or quote forms on this page.
The short answer. The mandatory Disabled Facilities Grant in England has been capped at £30,000 since 2008. Measured by consumer prices, that cap is now worth £17,613 in 2008 money, a loss of 41% of its value. To buy what £30,000 bought in May 2008, the cap would need to be £51,099 today. Measured by the cost of housing repair and maintenance work, which ONS has tracked since 2014, it buys 20% less than it did in 2014.
Prices and specs last checked by Look Into on 3 November 2026 · how we picked
What the price indices show
- The cap has not moved since 2008. The Disabled Facilities Grants (Maximum Amounts and Additional Purposes) (England) Order 2008 set the maximum mandatory grant at £30,000. It is still £30,000 in November 2026.
- Consumer prices have risen 70% since then. The CPI index stood at 84.6 in May 2008 and 144.1 in September 2026 (2015 = 100). £30,000 divided by that rise gives £17,613 in May 2008 money.
- Building repair costs rose more slowly than consumer prices after 2014. The ONS index for housing repair and maintenance output prices rose 25% between May 2014 and June 2026. Consumer prices rose 42% over almost the same period. So the cap has lost less against builders' prices than against the shop-price measure, but it has still lost 20% since 2014.
- The squeeze lands on the biggest jobs. Most grants are well below the cap; the average award is about a quarter of it (see our DFG guide). The cap bites on through-floor lifts, extensions and full bathroom conversions, where the gap above £30,000 falls to the household or to a council's discretionary top-up.
The £30,000 cap, year by year
Each year's value is £30,000 restated in May 2008 consumer prices, and from 2014 in May 2014 housing repair and maintenance prices. ONS construction price indices before 2014 were published by another department on a different basis and are not linked here.
| Month | CPI (2015 = 100) | £30,000 in May 2008 prices | Housing repair and maintenance price index (2015 = 100) | £30,000 in May 2014 building prices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2008 | 84.6 | £30,000 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2009 | 86.4 | £29,375 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2010 | 89.4 | £28,389 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2011 | 93.4 | £27,173 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2012 | 95.9 | £26,465 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2013 | 98.5 | £25,766 | n/a | n/a |
| May 2014 | 100.0 | £25,380 | 100.1 | £30,000 |
| May 2015 | 100.1 | £25,355 | 99.9 | £30,060 |
| May 2016 | 100.4 | £25,279 | 100.9 | £29,762 |
| May 2017 | 103.3 | £24,569 | 103.0 | £29,155 |
| May 2018 | 105.8 | £23,989 | 104.7 | £28,682 |
| May 2019 | 107.9 | £23,522 | 106.1 | £28,303 |
| May 2020 | 108.5 | £23,392 | 106.9 | £28,092 |
| May 2021 | 110.8 | £22,906 | 108.7 | £27,626 |
| May 2022 | 120.8 | £21,010 | 116.2 | £25,843 |
| May 2023 | 131.3 | £19,330 | 119.8 | £25,067 |
| May 2024 | 133.9 | £18,954 | 121.4 | £24,736 |
| May 2025 | 138.4 | £18,338 | 123.0 | £24,415 |
| May 2026 | 142.4 | £17,823 | 124.9 | £24,043 |
How Look Into made this
Real value = £30,000 × (index in the base month ÷ index in the later month). Consumer prices are the ONS CPI all-items index (series D7BT), using May of each year to match the 2008 Order and September 2026 as the latest month published. Building costs are the ONS interim construction output price index for housing repair and maintenance, Great Britain, from Table 3 of the August 2026 release, latest month June 2026.
What this could not check. No public index tracks the price of home adaptations specifically, such as stairlifts, level-access showers or through-floor lifts. The housing repair and maintenance index is the closest published measure, and it starts in 2014. The older construction cost series that ran to 2014 is not directly comparable. This page does not say what the cap should be; it shows what the existing figure is worth.
Sources
- The Disabled Facilities Grants (Maximum Amounts and Additional Purposes) (England) Order 2008, SI 2008/1189
- ONS, CPI index 00: all items, 2015 = 100 (D7BT), released 21 October 2026
- ONS, Construction output price indices, Table 3, released 13 August 2026
- Disabled Facilities Grant and other adaptations: external review (December 2018)
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