We provide disabled facilities grants to help qualifying applicants with works needed to meet basic housing requirements such as making access easier for a disabled person to get into and around their home and to provide essential facilities and amenities.

Although we can give financial assistance, the process is started off by Essex County Council's Community Care Service. One of their Occupational Therapists will visit your home to identify essential works or adaptations needed to help the disabled person and then they refer their recommendations to us. You can contact the team on 0845 603 7630 to see if you qualify.

Some work is covered by mandatory disabled facilities grants including:

• Adaptations to improve access into and around the home.
• Provision of suitable bathroom and sleeping facilities, heating, lighting and power.
• Adaptations to the kitchen.
• Adaptations to help a disabled person to care for dependent residents.

For this type of work you can obtain means tested grants of up to £30,000. Where the grant goes above £5000, the amount above £5000 gets registered against the property and is repayable if sold within 10 years. This is up to a maximum of £10,000.

There is also a range of discretionary works that might be important to individual disabled people, these include:

• Provision of specialist treatment facilities.
• Provision of a safe play area.
• Adaptations to allow working from home.

For these discretionary works you may be able to get a means tested, interest-free loan, if funding is available. The amount would be repayable if the home were sold or transferred to another owner.

For information on the services provided by Essex County Council see their Adult Care information on their website.

We are working in partnership with Swan Care and Repair. Home improvement agencies (HIAs) are "not for profit" organisations set up to assist older and disabled people and other vulnerable persons including those on low income, who are owner occupiers or tenants in the private sector, who need to carry out essential repairs, adaptations or improvements in their homes so they can continue to live in them in greater comfort and security.

The main involvement between us and the HIA concerns grant aided work, principally disabled facilities grants whereby Swan Repair and Care assists vulnerable clients through the whole grant process. The normal arrangement is for a member of Swan Repair and Care, sometimes accompanied by one of our grant officers, to visit an applicant following the receipt of an occupational therapist's report recommending certain works and to process a disabled facilities grant where appropriate.

For more information please Contact Swan Repair and Care on 01255 814410 or see their website www.swan.org.uk/swan_care_and_repair.

For any further information, please contact the private sector housing team as below:

E-mail: environmental.services@tendringdc.gov.uk
Address: Private sector housing, Council Offices, Thorpe Road, Weeley,
Essex, CO16 9AJ
Telephone: 01255 686744