I gave up on my grant application as they were pushing me to the WAV type option and not listening to the somewhat cheaper but still suitable solutions in normal cars.
I get what they were trying to achieve, complete independence but that requires a powered chair which I cannot afford and the fact remains, even if I could get myself out of the vehicle independently, it still didn’t change the fact that I need someone with me after that, so can never be truly independent.
We then got into a roundabout thing of applying for charities for a powered chair (need to have a WAV, not just one ordered and a house that is suitable), wheelchair services (had already declined due to house not meeting criteria even though my needs do meet the criteria) and I was just ping ponging between everyone. I kept saying that a normal vehicle with some tweaks would do the trick but it didn’t seem to get through.
In the end I gave up, found something on the scheme that sort of met things, cancelled that order after less than average customer service (a pleasant way to put it) and then youngest offered to help with an AP and I ordered a car that meets my needs, has all the things I had been suggesting to the grants team as standard, has one thing that would have had to be a specialised, very expensive thing on the van type vehicle and is far cheaper than anything they were suggesting (£2.2k compared to the 25-30k they were talking about at one point!).
Oh and I have space to park it too, unlike the bigger vehicle, wouldn’t have had a hope with that at home or at work.