Wessex Lifts Review: UK Prices, Platform & Through-Floor Lifts (2026)

Wessex Lifts: Company Overview

Wessex Lifts is a British manufacturer based in Romsey, Hampshire, building lifts for more than 50 years. Alongside its two domestic home lifts it makes platform and step lifts, and it is a familiar name in local authority and Disabled Facilities Grant work – a large share of Wessex installations are specified by an occupational therapist rather than chosen from a showroom.

That shapes the product. A Wessex home lift is engineered around a single wheelchair user or a single seated passenger moving between two floors, not around styling. Both models are hydraulic, both travel 3.0m or 3.5m, both serve two stops with an optional mid-floor stop, and neither needs a structural shaft – only a fire-sealed aperture.

Wessex Home Lift Range (2026)

• VM (open car) – the open-platform through-floor lift, from 1090 x 1031mm on the VM30 up to 1695 x 1636mm on the VM38. Rated for one seated person, with the VM31, VM36 and VM38 variants rated for wheelchair use. Optional mid-floor stop.
• VE (enclosed) – the enclosed-car version, 250kg as standard with a 300kg option, wheelchair rated. The enclosure is the main reason to choose it over the VM, both for reassurance and for the feel of a conventional lift.

Wessex contradicts itself on the VM’s load. Its technical specification and its user manual both say 250kg; its own brochure says 250 to 300kg. If capacity is close to critical for your specification, get the figure confirmed in writing against the model code you are actually buying.

Wessex Lifts Prices in 2026

Wessex publishes no price for either home lift. Its website says only that “our domestic lifts can cost from only a few thousand pounds upwards” and directs you to make contact. Along with Terry, it is one of just two UK brands in our tracker that publish nothing usable.

The most specific published figure anywhere is from the dealer 1st Choice Home Lifts, which lists the Wessex VM through-floor lift for one person from £13,000, installed with standard building works, and notes that it is zero-rated for VAT where the buyer has a qualifying disability. That single dealer figure is the lowest sourced installed price for any new home lift in the UK market we track – it is where the £13,000 floor on our home lift prices guide comes from.

Across the market we see Wessex home lift installations between £13,000 and £20,000 fully installed, with the enclosed VE and the larger wheelchair variants at the top. Every published figure we hold, with the exact wording and its source, is in our price tracker. Wessex platform and step lifts sit below that band, but we hold no verified published price for them and will not guess one.

Second-hand, a Wessex VM36 recently listed at £5,000 supply only – a council DFG installation three years old that had never been used.

Buying a Wessex Lift: What to Check

It does not plug into a normal socket. This is the single most important practical point on this page. The VM needs a hard-wired 220 to 240V supply on a 20A double-pole switch, and the VE needs a hard-wired RCD-protected 230V supply. The widely repeated claim that a home lift “just plugs into a 13A socket” is true of Stiltz, Lifton and Uplifts. It is not true of Wessex, and an electrician’s visit belongs in your budget.

Treat the noise figure carefully. Wessex states 70 dB, but states it as a not-to-exceed limit rather than a measured value. It is not comparable with a measured figure such as the 40 dB Cibes publishes for the Cloud Plus.

If a grant is involved, start there. Wessex is heavily specified through Disabled Facilities Grants. A grant must be approved before work begins and is means-tested for adult applicants, so the order of operations matters – see our home lift grants guide.

Wessex Lifts Pros and Cons

Advantages

• UK manufacturer with more than 50 years of trading, based in Romsey
• The lowest sourced installed price of any new UK home lift, from £13,000 through a dealer
• Strong wheelchair provision, with three VM variants and the VE rated for it
• No structural shaft required, only a fire-sealed aperture
• Well established in grant-funded and occupational therapy specification

Disadvantages

• Publishes no price for either model
• Contradicts itself on the VM load between its technical specification and its own brochure
• Needs a hard-wired supply, not a 13A socket, on both models
• Two floors and 3.5m of travel is the limit of the range
• Function-led rather than design-led – no finish customisation to speak of

Our Verdict on Wessex Lifts

Wessex is the value answer in the UK home lift market, and the figures back that up rather than the marketing. A dealer-published £13,000 installed is the cheapest sourced entry point to a new home lift anywhere we look, and the wheelchair provision across the VM variants is better than several brands charging half as much again.

What you give up is polish and transparency. There is no published price to hold anyone to, no finish options worth the name, and a load specification the manufacturer states two different ways. Best suited to a wheelchair user or a grant-funded adaptation where capacity and cost matter more than how the lift looks in the hallway.

Reviewed August 2026. Independent review – UK Homelifts is not affiliated with Wessex Lifts.