Who pays for an adjustment?
If an adjustment is reasonable, the person or organisation providing it must pay for it. As a disabled person, even if you have asked for the adjustment, you must not be asked to pay for it.
For example:
A guest house has installed an audio-visual fire alarm in one of its guest bedrooms in order to accommodate visitors with a sensory impairment. In order to recover the costs of this installation, the landlady charges disabled guests a higher daily charge for that room, although it is otherwise identical to other bedrooms. This increased charge is unlikely to be within the law.
Even if the person or organisation charges other people for a service, such as delivering something, if the reason they are providing the service to you is as a reasonable adjustment, they must not charge you for it. But if you are using the service in exactly the same way as other customers, clients, service users or members, then they can charge you the same as they charge other people.
For example:
A wine merchant runs an online shopping service and charges all customers for home delivery. Its customers include disabled people with mobility impairments. Since this online service does not create a substantial disadvantage for disabled people with mobility impairments wishing to use it, home delivery, in these circumstances, will not be a reasonable adjustment that the wine merchant has to make. Therefore, the wine merchant can charge disabled customers in the same way as other customers for this service.
However, another wine merchant has a shop which is inaccessible to disabled people with mobility impairments. Home delivery in these circumstances might be a reasonable adjustment for the wine merchant to have to make for these customers. The wine merchant could not then charge such customers for home delivery, even though it charges other customers for home delivery.
More information
Protected characteristic's definitions
View the current guidance and information for service users
Your responsibilities for staff behaviour
Last Updated: 06 Jan 2015