What UK Councils Pay for Home Lifts (2026): 25 Contract Notices

UK Homelifts procurement research / September 2026

Councils buy home lifts through contracts that are published. We read 25 UK contract notices, 18 of them awards, covering December 2016 to February 2026. Terry Group and Wessex Lift Co are named more often than any other home lift brand, and neither publishes a price for any of its models.

The brands councils appoint are not the brands you find first

Of the nine home lift brands covered on our brand pages, four appear in the award notices: Stiltz, Stannah, Terry and Wessex. Lifton, Cibes, Aritco, SWIFT and Companion appear in none of them. Consumer search for home lifts is dominated by a set of brands that this evidence barely touches.

The table below counts how many of the 18 award notices name each lift supplier. Notices that name a supplier only as a maintenance contractor are counted the same as those appointing it to install, because the notices themselves rarely separate the two.

Source: 18 contract award notices on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, read individually in September 2026. Two rows merge company names: Stannah combines notices listing Stannah with those listing Stannah Lift Services Limited, and the ThyssenKrupp row combines thyssenkrupp, thyssenkrupp Home Solutions, ThyssenKrupp Encasa and TK Access Solutions Limited across that company’s renames. Unmerged, no single spelling appears in more than four notices.

The two most appointed brands publish no price at all

Terry Group and Wessex Lift Co are each named in six of the 18 award notices, more than any other home lift manufacturer. Neither publishes a price for any model.

Terry runs a page in its own FAQ section headed with the question of how much a home lift costs. It contains no figure. Wessex published a post asking how much it costs to install a lift in your home, dated October 2021. It contains no figure either, and gives a phone number instead. Both were checked again on 4 September 2026.

That combination is the finding worth carrying away. The manufacturers UK councils appoint most often are the ones a private buyer can learn least about. Our Terry Lifts and Wessex Lifts pages carry what is documented for each, and our price tracker records every UK home lift price that is published anywhere, with the source.

Durham publishes the only per-lift figure available

No notice in this set publishes a unit price or a schedule of rates. Durham County Council comes closest, because it publishes a value and a volume in the same document.

Its framework for vertical through-floor lifts, reference OPEN202537, is worth £800,000 excluding VAT and runs from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2029. Terry Group Limited is the main contractor and TK Access Solutions Limited the reserve. The same notice states that a combined total of approximately 10 vertical through-floor lifts are delivered on an annual basis across the county.

Ten lifts a year across four years is about 40 lifts. Spread across the framework ceiling, that is roughly £20,000 per lift.

One council’s framework doubled in four years

Fife Council has awarded the same framework twice under an identical title, covering through floor lifts, external lifts and ceiling tracking hoists, to the same two suppliers.

Sources: Find a Tender notice 030297-2021 and Find a Tender notice 046163-2025.

The framework title and the supplier list are unchanged between the two notices, so this is the closest thing to a like-for-like comparison the public record offers. The ceiling doubled across four years.

Why these values are not prices

A framework value is the most a buyer may spend under the agreement. It is not a commitment, and several notices say so in their own words.

The Efficiency East Midlands lifts and mobility framework, valued at £100 million including VAT, states that there are no guarantees with regards to values and volume of works to be let through it. The London Borough of Hillingdon states that the provider will be issued cases from its housing grants and adaptations team but must be aware that there is no guarantee of volumes or value to the contract.

Leeds City Council is the only buyer in the set that publishes an expected annual rate: an estimated £475,000 a year for stairlifts and £195,000 a year for specialist lifts, from February 2026 to February 2030.

Where the official record contradicts itself

Two problems in the source data are worth recording, because anyone using these notices will meet them.

The same Durham award appears on both government portals with different supplier splits. Find a Tender shows £800,000 against Terry Group and £800,000 against TK Access Solutions. Contracts Finder shows £799,999 against Terry Group and £1 against TK Access Solutions. Same procurement, same month, two published versions.

Bradford’s framework award lists nine suppliers and shows the full £1,400,000 framework ceiling against every one of them. Adding the supplier lines gives £12.6 million for a £1.4 million framework. Any automated read of these notices that sums supplier values will overstate this market by roughly nine times.

Durham’s two volume statements also cannot be compared. Its 2020 notice covering all community lifts states that approximately 175 are delivered annually. Its 2025 notice, covering vertical through-floor lifts only, states approximately 10. The scopes are different, so the pair is recorded in our dataset and deliberately not presented as a decline.

Every notice we read

All 25 notices, newest first. Values are as published, with the VAT basis where the notice states one. Supplier lists are shortened where a notice names more than four.

Sources: Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, captured 4 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Download the dataset

The full capture is available as a CSV with 16 columns, including the verbatim volume statements and a source URL on every row. Download the dataset as CSV (25 rows, 12 KB).

Questions

Which home lift brands do UK councils buy from?

Across 18 UK council and housing association contract award notices read in September 2026, four of the nine home lift brands we track appear: Stiltz, Stannah, Terry and Wessex. Lifton, Cibes, Aritco, SWIFT and Companion do not appear in any of them. That is a finding about these 18 notices rather than proof that a brand never wins council work.

Which lift supplier do councils appoint most often?

Five suppliers are named in six of the 18 award notices each: Terry Group, Wessex Lift Co, Pollock Lifts, Stannah, and the ThyssenKrupp Access business now trading as TK Access Solutions. Prism UK Medical appears in five and Handicare Accessibility in four. Stiltz appears in two, both times alongside other suppliers.

What does a council pay for a through-floor lift?

No published notice states a unit price. Durham County Council is the only buyer in this set that publishes both a contract value and a volume: a framework worth £800,000 excluding VAT running from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2029, against its own statement that approximately 10 vertical through-floor lifts are delivered annually across the county. At the framework’s maximum that is about £20,000 per lift, which is a ceiling and not a price paid.

Why can the contract values not be read as home lift prices?

Framework values are spending ceilings, and several notices say so directly. The Efficiency East Midlands lifts framework, valued at £100 million including VAT, states that there are no guarantees with regards to values and volume of works to be let through it. The London Borough of Hillingdon notice states that there is no guarantee of volumes or value to the contract. Bradford’s notice repeats its full £1.4 million ceiling against each of nine suppliers, so adding the supplier lines together overstates that framework roughly ninefold.

Where does this data come from?

Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, the two UK government procurement portals. Each notice was opened and read individually and the figures recorded as published, with the source URL kept against every row. The dataset covers 25 notices published between December 2016 and February 2026, of which 18 are contract award notices.

Captured and last checked 4 September 2026. Sources: Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. Compiled by the UK Homelifts research team.