Retired Paralympian calls for multi-billion Motability reserves to fund more grants for high-cost vehicles

A retired Paralympian has called for the charity that oversees the Motability scheme to use some of its huge financial reserves to allow more disabled people with high support needs to drive independently.

Zoe Dunklin (pictured) believes that Motability Foundation’s policies on awarding grants that allow customers to lease more expensive vehicle conversions are discriminating against her and many other disabled people who need expensive drive-from-wheelchair adaptations.

She believes some of the billions of pounds of reserves held by the charity and by Motability Operations, the company that runs the scheme on its behalf, should be used to provide more grants for what the Motability scheme calls “complex driving solutions” (CDSs).

Motability Operations currently holds £4.2 billion in reserves, although it insists that nearly all of this is held in the form of vehicles, rather than cash.

Motability Foundation* held nearly £1.8 billion in reserves on 31 March 2023, although it says only about £500 million of this was available to spend on grant-making.

Dunklin is a double amputee and powerchair-user and competed for Britain at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta in wheelchair basketball – as Zoe Dickinson – and before that represented her country in swimming.

She has been a Motability customer for more than 30 years.

For more than a decade, Motability rules on awarding grants have prioritised support for disabled people in paid work, volunteering, education, and in caring roles, although there are exceptions made for those whose “circumstances make the use of a complex vehicle conversion essential for… everyday mobility”.

Until recently, Dunklin had a health condition that meant she could not drive, but she is now in a position where she can drive again.

She still has other ongoing health conditions that mean she needs to make regular trips to hospital, while she is also concerned about her husband’s health after a recent heart scare saw them being told they would have to wait more than three hours for an ambulance to take him to hospital.

She may soon be starting voluntary work with a charity, but even if she secures that role she will not meet the Motability criteria of working at least 12 hours a week, and she says she was told by Motability Foundation that “people say they will get volunteer work and [then] don’t”.

Although Dunklin currently has a Motability vehicle, it is only her husband who can drive it.

The only option they could afford would be to lease a vehicle that allowed her to drive but would rely on her husband to load her wheelchair into the back of the vehicle after she had transferred into the driver’s seat, and do the reverse at the other end of the journey.

Instead, she wants Motability Foundation to help fund a van she could drive from her wheelchair, using hand controls, which would allow her independent mobility, but if she paid for it herself would likely mean an advance payment of more than £20,000.

When she complained about the refusal of her application for a grant, she was told: “Due to the high overall cost of the solution, there is a strict criteria in place which every application is assessed and considered against.

“This is to ensure that we remain fair and consistent when making decisions – as you know, sadly we are unable to award a charitable grant to every applicant of a CDS vehicle.”

She was told that Motability Foundation had concluded “there were not sufficient exceptional circumstances for us to be able to fund a CDS vehicle for you” and that the charity was “confident that the correct decision has been made in line with our funding priorities and principles, and programme criteria”.

The charity also concluded that it had “found no evidence of discrimination” against her.

But Dunklin told Disability News Service: “I feel am being directly and indirectly discriminated against by the one organisation I believed to be about freedom and independence.”

She believes that Motability Foundation and Motability Operations should work together more closely and provide more funding for the grants programme, and “listen more to their disabled applicants”.

She said: “Individuals’ changes in circumstances like mine are not being met.

“As we are getting older, our situations are increasing too.

“My husband has a heart condition, and I want to know I can get him to his appointments and in an emergency to the hospital if an ambulance is going to be a long wait.

“It would be interesting to know how many others cannot or do not think they can fight these decisions.”

A Motability Foundation spokesperson told DNS: “Motability Operations currently subsidise the cost of all wheelchair accessible vehicles leased through the scheme.

“Those who need additional conversions and adaptations can apply to the Motability Foundation for grant funding.

“Complex vehicles that can be driven from a wheelchair are some of the most expensive solutions that the Motability Foundation awards grants towards, costing between £20,000 and £70,000 a vehicle.

“As a charity, we must focus our funding on meeting people’s mobility needs to ensure they get a suitable vehicle, but also to ensure that we are able to help as many people as possible with the funds available.

“To do this we set funding priorities, which in the case of vehicles that can be driven from a wheelchair, include the vehicle being essential to support the applicant with various activities such as work, education and volunteering.”

She added: “Following an application and several appeals, Zoe Dunklin could not demonstrate that she meets the current funding priorities for a complex driving solution and therefore we cannot fund the vehicle she would like at this time.

“We have, however, offered alternatives which whilst we understand do not enable her to drive independently, will offer alternative mobility to the vehicle she currently leases.

“We are sorry that we are not able to help Zoe at this point in time.

“However, when she has been in her voluntary role for six months and can demonstrate that it meets the criteria set at that point in time, we would gladly consider a new grant application.”

She said the charity held a high level of financial reserves – equivalent to several years of grant funding – because its primary source of income was donations from the “surplus capital” of Motability Operations, which was “unpredictable”, with “no guarantee from year to year that a donation will be received”.

She said Motability Foundation spent £113 million on charitable spending in 2022-23, compared with £78 million in 2021-22, and expected to have seen a further rise in 2023-24.

A Motability Operations spokesperson said: “We work together with the Motability Foundation to support our disabled customers and keep them moving.

“We are in contact with Zoe about her current vehicle and her future options.”

She said that holding £4.2 billion in capital reserves allowed it to reduce the amount it borrows and so reduce costs for its customers by £650 per lease.

She said it also protected customers from the risk of fluctuations in the changing costs of new vehicles, insurance and breakdowns, and the changing value of used vehicles, while allowing it to support customers with affordability.

There are long-standing concerns over the rules for awarding Motability grants, with previous suggestions that they could discriminate against some disabled drivers with high support needs.

Nine years ago, Motability defended the rules – introduced in 2014 – arguing that it had a “finite amount of money”, that the new criteria “allow us to approach applications in a consistent manner”, and that “the complexity and cost of the [drive from wheelchair] vehicles makes it inevitable that some criteria will be applied to prioritise applications for support”.

It is more than five years since high-profile concerns were raised about the levels of financial reserves held by Motability Operations, and over the company’s excessive profits and executive pay.

Those concerns led to parliamentary debates and a critical report by the National Audit Office.

*Motability Foundation is a DNS subscriber

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