Well after nearly 2 years of battling with the council we finally have an agreement on the proposed extension!!!  You have no idea how this decision has changed our lives.  For those who don’t know the story…We have a four bedroom house but unfortunately all the bedrooms are upstairs and the design of the house doesn’t allow for a bedroom and bathroom to be designed in the existing downstairs living space thus we had to come up with a plan.  Initial meetings with the council suggested putting in a lift to allow Finlay access to the upstairs rooms and bathroom but i’m sure, like me, you are wondering how this fits in a family home!  It doesn’t!!  Well it would if we had allowed the council the go ahead but the whole of the upstairs would have been truned on its head and we would have gone from a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom house due to the adaptations – not what we want for our family home so we continued to put the point across that a ground floor purpose built extension with bedroom and wetroom for Finlay was the most sensible option.  Now for those who have not had to fight the system…the council/government state that they help with house adaptation for disabled people so we thought great (hard finding $40,000 on one wage) but little did we know that because the extension was an external adaptation (outside the exsiting property) it was not eligible for financial support.  Now had we gone with the lift idea the coucil would have been liable for the majority of the costs as the work would be internal but it would cost more than the extension and would not be a long term solution to Finlay’s developing needs.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, after many meetings and many emails/letters we have finally had an agreement from the council that they will provide us with a quarter of the costs of the extension!!!!!!!!!!  This was an amazing boost to us as a family but it took far too long.  The stress and pressure we have been under to try and provide an accessible family home for Finlay and us has been huge.  i hope the council learn from this experience and don’t put other families through the same stree.