Half of Britain’s stairlift companies no longer exist. The typical one lasted 2.6 years

Published 13 August 2026

We searched the Companies House register for every UK company ever incorporated with “stairlift”, “stair lift”, “homelift”, “home lift” or “chairlift” in its name. There have been 323 of them. Of those, 148 no longer exist, and the typical one lasted 2.6 years.

Stairlifts are sold with warranties of two, five or ten years, and occasionally with a lifetime guarantee on the motor or gearbox. A warranty is a contract with a limited company. Dissolve the company and the contract goes with it.

Key findings

• 323 UK companies have been registered with a stairlift or home-lift name. 148 of them, or 46%, have been dissolved. Two more are currently in liquidation.
• The median dissolved company survived 2.6 years from incorporation to dissolution.
• 107 of the 148 lasted under five years. Seventy-four lasted between one and three years.
• Dissolutions have run at a steady six to eleven a year for sixteen years, with no spike attributable to any single event.
• Among the 175 companies still on the register, 45 are under five years old and 15 are under two. The median survivor is 10.2 years old.
• The trade’s main approved code of practice covers stairlifts and requires deposit protection. It says nothing about what happens to a customer’s warranty or service contract if a member firm stops trading.

Dissolved does not mean bankrupt

A company leaves the register for several reasons. Insolvency is one. Voluntary strike-off when an owner retires is another, and so is routine restructuring where a trading business moves into a new legal entity and the old one is closed behind it. Some of these 148 dissolutions will have been entirely orderly, and some of those businesses are still trading today under a different company number.

That is why we have not published a list naming individual firms. The register records that a company was dissolved. It does not record why in any form you can read at scale, and we are not willing to imply failure where the evidence does not support it.

The point for buyers holds either way. When the company named on your paperwork stops existing, so does the entity that owed you the warranty. A successor business may choose to honour it, and the better ones usually do, but nothing obliges them to.

How long stairlift companies last

Lifespan from incorporation to dissolution, for the 148 dissolved companies.

Compare that with how the product is sold. Five-year parts-and-labour cover is standard. Ten years is common on a new straight lift. The median dissolved company in this trade did not last long enough to see out a five-year warranty written on its first day of business.

Dissolutions by year

A further eight companies had been dissolved by 13 August 2026. What stands out is the flatness. There is no crash year and no boom year, just six to eleven companies going every year for as long as the register covers.

What happens to your warranty

If the installer is a dealer for a manufacturer that is still trading, a manufacturer-backed warranty may well survive. If the warranty was issued in the installer’s own name, it generally does not. Establishing which of the two you are being offered, in writing, before you pay is the most useful thing a buyer can do.

Rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 run against the trader you contracted with. Where that trader has been dissolved, there is usually nobody left to claim against.

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 is the exception, and it is worth understanding properly because most summaries of it are wrong. If you buy an item with a cash price of more than £100 and no more than £30,000 using a credit card or retailer-arranged finance, the lender is jointly and severally liable with the retailer for breach of contract or misrepresentation. Jointly and severally means you can pursue the lender for the whole amount without first chasing the retailer, and it makes no difference whether the retailer still exists.

Two details that catch people out. The £100 and £30,000 thresholds apply to the cash price of the item, not to the sum you put on the card, so paying a £200 deposit by credit card on a £4,000 stairlift protects the full £4,000. And £30,000 is an eligibility limit rather than a ceiling on what you can recover. Section 75 does not cover debit card payments, where your only route is chargeback, a card scheme process rather than a legal right and subject to short time limits. It also does not cover charge cards that have to be settled in full each month.

Servicing is the practical problem people actually run into. An orphaned lift can usually be maintained by an independent engineer. Parts are the constraint. Widely sold models from established manufacturers stay supportable for years, while own-brand lifts sold under a single retailer’s badge can become very hard to source parts for once that retailer disappears.

Five questions worth asking before you sign

• Who manufactures this lift, and is the warranty from the manufacturer or from you? Ask for the answer in writing.
• What is your company registration number? Look it up free on the Companies House register. Incorporation date, filing history and any insolvency record are all public and take two minutes to check.
• Is my deposit protected, and in what kind of account?
• Are you signed up to an approved code of practice, and can I verify that?
• If you stop trading, who services this lift? There is no standard answer to this one, but the response tells you something about the firm.

The gap in the code

The British Healthcare Trades Association runs a consumer code approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, covering twelve sectors of which one is stairlifts and access. As of October 2024 the code covered 347 businesses, drawn from a membership of more than 400 companies employing around 18,500 people.

The code does useful work. It requires deposits and advance payments to be held in a dedicated or third-party custodial account so they can be returned if the member cannot fulfil the contract. It requires non-refundable deposits to be flagged at the point of order. It sets standards for how members sell.

On continuity it is silent. We searched the full text of the September 2024 version of the code, published at approvedcode.tradingstandards.uk, on 13 August 2026, for the terms “insolvency”, “insolvent”, “administration”, “liquidation” and “ceases to trade”. None of them appears anywhere in the document. Deposit protection covers money handed over for goods not yet received. It does nothing for a customer who has a working stairlift, a ten-year warranty certificate and an installer that was dissolved in year three.

On the basis of that search, our view is that this is a gap worth closing, and a cheap one. Insurance-backed guarantees are standard practice in other trades that sell long warranties on installed equipment, double glazing and roofing among them. We put no question of bad faith on anyone; the code simply does not address the situation. If the BHTA would like to respond, we will publish its reply on this page in full.

Methodology

Source: the Companies House public register, searched through the free advanced company search on 13 August 2026. We queried company names containing “stairlift”, “stair lift”, “stairlifts”, “homelift”, “home lift”, “through floor lift”, “chairlift” and “chair lift”, across all company statuses, then de-duplicated by company number. Four results were excluded by hand as obvious false positives whose names matched the string but which are not in this trade, leaving 323 companies. Lifespan is the interval between the incorporation and dissolution dates recorded on the register. No director or officer personal data was collected, and none is published here.

Limitations. This is a name-based sample, so treat it as a proxy for the trade, not a census of it. Plenty of stairlift businesses trade under names containing none of these words and are invisible to it, while a handful of the companies captured may never have traded at all. The register does not record the reason for a dissolution in machine-readable form, which is why we have not characterised any individual dissolution as a failure. The sample leans towards smaller independent installers, since the national manufacturers generally trade under brand names that do not contain the word stairlift in the registered entity.

Sources

• Companies House advanced company search, public register, accessed 13 August 2026.
• British Healthcare Trades Association Code of Practice, CTSI approved, September 2024 version.
• Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 75.

Licence and reuse

The aggregate dataset is free to download: uk-stairlift-company-survival-2026.csv. It contains the status breakdown, the survival distribution and the dissolutions-by-year series. We have not published the company-by-company list, for the reasons given above.

The selection, structure and presentation of this dataset, being the parts in which Review Mobility holds copyright and database right, are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

The underlying figures come from the Companies House public register. Register information is made available by virtue of approvals issued by Companies House under section 47 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and Schedule 1 to the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997. It is not licensed under the Open Government Licence, and Review Mobility grants no licence over it.

Suggested citation: Review Mobility (2026) UK stairlift company survival analysis. Analysis of the Companies House register, August 2026. Available at: https://reviewmobility.co.uk/stairlifts/stairlift-company-survival/

If you think anything here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and note the correction on this page.

This article is general information about consumer rights, not legal advice, and it does not take account of anyone’s particular circumstances. If you have a dispute about a stairlift purchase, take advice from Citizens Advice, Trading Standards or a solicitor.

This research was produced by Review Mobility and was not commissioned or paid for by any third party. It carries no affiliate links.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Stairlift Company Failures and Warranties

How many UK stairlift companies have gone out of business?

Of 323 UK companies ever registered with a stairlift or home-lift name, 148 have been dissolved and two are currently in liquidation, according to the Companies House register in August 2026. That is 46% of every such company ever incorporated. Dissolution covers voluntary closure and restructuring as well as insolvency, so not every case is a business failure.

How long does the average stairlift company last?

The median dissolved company in this sample lasted 2.6 years from incorporation to dissolution, and 72% lasted under five years. Among companies still trading the median age is 10.2 years, so the survivors are markedly more established than the average entrant.

What happens to my stairlift warranty if the company goes bust?

A warranty issued in the installer’s own name generally ends when that company stops existing, because the contract was with that legal entity. A manufacturer’s warranty may survive if the lift was built by a separate company that is still trading and your installer was a dealer. Getting it in writing, before you buy, which of the two you are being given is the most useful protection available.

Does paying by credit card protect me?

Often, yes. Under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, where an item has a cash price of more than £100 and no more than £30,000 and you pay by credit card or retailer-arranged finance, the lender is jointly and severally liable with the retailer for breach of contract or misrepresentation. You can claim the full amount from the lender even if the retailer has been dissolved. The thresholds apply to the cash price of the item rather than the amount you put on the card, so paying only a deposit by credit card can protect the whole purchase. Debit cards are not covered by section 75.

How can I check whether a stairlift company is financially sound?

Ask for the company registration number and search it free on the Companies House register. You can see the incorporation date, whether accounts and confirmation statements are filed on time, any charges registered against the company and any insolvency history. A company incorporated last year offering a ten-year warranty deserves a second thought.

Can an independent engineer service a stairlift if the installer has closed?

Usually. Independent stairlift engineers routinely take on lifts fitted by companies that no longer trade. Parts availability is the limiting factor. Widely sold models from established manufacturers stay serviceable for many years, while own-brand or imported lifts sold under one retailer’s badge can become difficult to source parts for once that retailer has gone.

Does the industry code of practice protect my warranty?

No. The British Healthcare Trades Association code, approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and covering stairlifts and access, requires members to protect customer deposits in a dedicated or custodial account. We searched the September 2024 text and found no provision dealing with what happens to a warranty or service contract if a member ceases trading.

Can I reuse this research?

Yes. The aggregate dataset is a free CSV download, reusable with credit to Review Mobility and a link to this page, under the licence terms set out above.

Published 13 August 2026