Stairlifts for Tenement Flats and Older Scottish Homes

Around a third of Scotland's housing is tenement, and a great deal more is Victorian, Edwardian, or pre-war. The stairs in those buildings were not designed for stairlifts. The good news is that most of them can take one anyway. The bigger questions are about permission, listed status, and the awkward stair geometry common in older Scottish homes.

The two scenarios you might be in

Before anything else, work out which of these describes your situation. Everything that follows depends on it.

Scenario A: stairs inside your flat

Many Scottish flats have their own internal staircase. This includes top-floor "duplex" flats with attic conversions, lower flats that have absorbed a basement, mews properties, and converted townhouses. If the stairs are entirely inside your home and only you use them, the legal position is the same as in any private house. You can have a stairlift fitted with no neighbour consent at all. Listed Building Consent might still apply if the building is listed, but in practice internal stairlifts almost always go ahead because the rail fixes to the stair treads rather than the walls.

Scenario B: stairs in a shared close

This is the harder situation. The close, the stairs, and the half-landings are common property. They are owned in shares by every flat in the building and managed either by a factor or under the rules in the title deeds. Anything fitted to that shared property needs the consent of every other owner. There is no way around this, and any installer who tells you otherwise is setting you up for a dispute.

Consent is usually arranged in one of two ways:

• Through the factor - if the building has a factor (Hacking and Paterson, Ross and Liddell, James Gibb, and similar), they will know how to circulate a consent letter to all owners and gather signatures. There is usually a small admin fee.
• Direct to neighbours - if there is no factor, the title deeds will say what proportion of owners need to agree (often a simple majority, sometimes unanimous depending on the deed). You go door to door, or post a letter through each flat's letterbox.

In our experience, neighbours usually agree. The objections that come up are about cosmetic appearance, the stairlift blocking pram or bin access, or worry about reducing the building's saleability. Each is answerable: modern stairlifts fold flat against the rail, leaving a clear path, and the rail can be removed cleanly when no longer needed.

Listed buildings and conservation areas

A great deal of Scotland's older housing is listed. This is especially true in central Edinburgh (most of the New Town and Old Town are within the World Heritage Site), Glasgow's West End and Merchant City, and many Aberdeen, Stirling, and Perth conservation areas.

Listed Building Consent is a separate process from planning permission. Broadly:

• An internal stairlift in a listed flat does not usually need consent because nothing structural is altered. The rail bolts to the stair treads through small fixings, which can be removed and made good. Always confirm with the council, but a refusal at this level is rare.
• A stairlift on a listed shared close is a different matter. The stone or timber stair, the close walls, the railings, the tile floor and any decorative features are usually part of what is listed. Historic Environment Scotland or the local conservation officer may want to see the proposal, especially in Edinburgh's New Town. Sympathetic installations do go ahead, but more care is needed.

For listed buildings, we recommend talking to your council's conservation team early, before booking the survey. Most are helpful when the work has a clear medical justification.

Tenement stairs are narrower than modern stairs

The stairs in a typical 1880s Glasgow or Edinburgh tenement are around 800 to 900mm wide. Some are tighter. They were built when standards were different and the average household had no expectation of carrying a wheeled buggy or a fridge upstairs.

Modern stairlifts are designed with this in mind. A slimline straight stairlift with a manual swivel seat needs around 720mm of clear stair width when the seat is folded and the user is riding. When the seat is folded up and not in use, that drops to around 350mm, leaving a generous walking path for everyone else. The narrower the stairs, the more important it is that the surveyor measures the exact width and any pinch points (stair carpet edges, banister fixings, light fittings on the wall above).

For very narrow stairs, a perch stairlift is an alternative. The user stands rather than sits, supported by a small saddle seat and a backrest. It needs less width than a sit-down model and is good for people who can stand but not climb. It does require enough leg strength to bear weight throughout the ride.

Curved tenement stairs

Many tenement closes have a quarter-turn or half-turn around a central well. Glasgow's "wally close" stairs typically curve around a window. These all require a curved stairlift with a custom rail that follows the exact bend.

The curved rail is laser-measured during the survey and manufactured to the millimetre. Once on site, it goes onto the stair treads in a single continuous run. Curved stairlifts cost more than straight ones and typically take three to six weeks to manufacture. Once the rail arrives, fitting is usually completed in a day.

Common tenement scenarios we see

The top-floor flat with attic stairs

An owner has converted the loft to a bedroom or office. There is now a steep narrow stair from the upper landing into the conversion. The surveyor's first job is checking whether the staircase angle is within the stairlift's working range (most rails handle up to around 52 degrees). Where the stair is steeper than that, a perch can sometimes work. Failing that, a through-floor lift (a small platform inside a vertical shaft) becomes the alternative, but this is a much bigger job.

The B-listed Edinburgh New Town close

The close has a beautiful sweeping stone stair, an iron railing, a tile floor, and a stained-glass window. Listing applies to the whole close. We have fitted stairlifts in closes like this, but only with the conservation officer briefed early and a clear case for medical need. The rail is fitted to the stair treads only. No fixing into stone, no alteration to the railing, no impact on the window. The work is reversible.

The Glasgow conversion duplex

An upper flat has been combined with the floor below. The internal stair is private. From a permissions point of view, this is the simplest scenario in tenement work. Survey, install, no neighbour consent, no listed building issues unless the conversion is also listed. These installations are normally completed in a day.

The lift-less ground floor

The flat is on the ground floor. Stairs are not the main issue, but there is a half-flight up from the close door to the front door of the flat. This sometimes suits a step lift or vertical platform lift rather than a stairlift, depending on the height. Step lifts require less permission than stairlifts in a shared close because they are usually wholly inside the flat's threshold area.

Building warrant and other consents

Most stairlift installs in Scotland do not need a building warrant. The Building Standards regulations do not classify a stairlift as building work, because nothing structural is altered and the stairs themselves are unchanged. The exceptions are:

• If the work involves cutting or altering the stair treads.
• If a structural change is needed (very rare for stairlifts).
• For platform lifts and through-floor lifts, which are different products and often need warrants.

What we do for tenement surveys

Our surveyors deal with tenement stairs every week. The free home survey for a tenement covers the same ground as any survey, plus three extra checks specific to older Scottish properties:

1. Whether the stairs are private or shared, and what permissions will be needed.
2. Whether the building is listed, in a conservation area, or otherwise protected.
3. Whether there is enough usable stair width for a sit-down stairlift, or whether a perch is needed.

If consent from neighbours or a conservation officer is going to be needed, we can flag it during the survey and walk through the practical steps. We do not start any installation work until consents are in place.

Frequently asked questions