Foundations announces return of its Disabled Facilities Grant roadshows
Foundations, the national body for home improvement agencies in England, has announced the 2025 spring run of its popular DFG Champions Roadshows.
The series of free in-person events links up dedicated professionals who help thousands of people to adapt their homes every year.
This spring, the DFG Champions Roadshows will be focusing on how local authorities can make the most of their Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) budgets amid growing financial pressures. The agenda will highlight the importance of prioritisation, collaboration, and flexibility as key themes to ensure effective service delivery.
During the events, there will be presentations exploring how to determine who should be prioritised for assessments and adaptations. It will cover methods to target cases that provide the greatest health and social care benefits, such as preventing hospital admissions or enabling timely discharges.
The discussion will include examples of how local authorities can work closely with health and social care professionals to establish consistent and transparent prioritisation criteria that ensure fairness while maximising impact.
In addition, the DFG Champions Roadshows will focus on the role of partnerships in stretching DFG funding further. The discussion will explore how collaboration with health, social care, and housing organisations can align funding and priorities to achieve shared goals.
There will be examples of how to incentivise housing providers to incorporate accessibility into refurbishments and how to improve the allocation of accessible housing stock. The session will demonstrate how these collaborative efforts can create long-term benefits, both for individuals and the wider community.
There will also be presentations on how local authorities can use discretion effectively when budgets are tight.
The events will discuss practical examples of revising housing assistance policies to address funding gaps and explore the strategic use of discretionary funding to support both urgent and preventative adaptations.
Real-world case studies will illustrate how flexibility in policies can deliver tailored solutions, ensuring resources are allocated where they are most needed.
Each DFG Champions Roadshow will feature a mix of good practice, news, conversation, quizzes, exhibitors, and lunch, plus a couple of surprises.
The dates and locations for the spring DFG Champions Roadshows 2025 are:
- Newcastle Crowne Plaza, 26 February
- Manchester Kings House, 5 March
- Nottingham Crowne Plaza, 13 March
- Plymouth Crowne Plaza, 19 March
- London Clayton Chiswick, 9 April
- London Clayton Chiswick, 10 April
Tickets can be booked via the DFG Champions page on the Foundations website. Foundations urges people to book tickets quickly to avoid disappointment.
Research by Ageing Better revealed that fixing the dangerous homes lived in by older people would directly save the NHS and the social care sector more than £1.5 billion a year while delivering billions more in health benefits.
