About Us

1st Choice Stairlifts® is a family-run, independent stairlift and home lift company, founded in 2004 by directors Coral Affleck-Major and Colin Major. Over 22 years we've grown into a team of 20, including 9 engineers and 2 surveyors on the road, working across Wiltshire, Bristol, Bath, Swindon, Gloucestershire, Dorset, Hampshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, with showrooms in Calne and Ferndown. We install around 500 stairlifts and home lifts a year, and maintain over 2,500 lifts making us one of the largest regional independent dealers in the South of England.

We sell new, reconditioned and rental stairlifts and home lifts, across multiple manufacturers, and we service and repair lifts whether we installed them or not, with emergency out-of-hours repairs available 365 days a year. Our head office is based on Calne’s Porte Marsh Industrial Estate. Our Ferndown branch came about in 2024, when we took over Dolphin Care Stairlifts and County Stairlifts on the south coast in Dorset. Rather than keep their old premises, we stayed on the same Industrial Estate but moved into a modern, fully accessible building instead.

You can read more about Coral, Colin and the rest of the team on our Meet the Experts page.

Colin spent 15 years as an engineer at Stannah, working on installation, servicing and fault diagnosis, providing worldwide technical support, representing the company at trade shows and exhibitions, and contributing to product development, before he left to go and work for an independent dealer. He wanted to learn what else was out there beyond one manufacturer's range, and to see what independent, local service actually looked like from the inside. That's where he and Coral got talking.

Coral had spent 8 years in marketing and sales for stairlift manufacturers Bison Bede and ThyssenKrupp Access, marketing to customers and helping them understand their options, running showroom visits and exhibitions, and feeding back into product development. Between them, that's 23 years working directly for some of the biggest names in the industry.

What they kept coming back to was this: manufacturers could offer professional standards, but not always a personal, local relationship. Independent dealers could offer that local relationship, but not always the same range of choice or professional rigour. So in 2004, Coral and Colin set up 1st Choice Stairlifts® to be both: the product choice and professional standards you'd expect from a manufacturer, delivered with the personal, local service of an independent, family-run business, and backed by aftercare you can actually rely on when you need your lift running again quickly.

We're authorised dealers across multiple manufacturers, including Stannah, Handicare, Platinum, Access, Otolift, Brooks, Wessex and Stiltz, and our engineers are trained across all of these ranges. That means when we recommend a lift, we're recommending whichever one actually suits your home, whether that's a stairlift for your staircase, a through-floor lift, or a wheelchair platform lift, and your budget, not whichever one we're contracted to sell. We're not set up for a single transaction and then goodbye. We're set up for the lifetime of your lift.

A few months after we started the business in 2004, a senior occupational therapist invited us out on a visit. She was impressed enough by our approach and product knowledge that she asked us to run a one-hour training session at a training day she'd organised for occupational therapists across the region.

That one hour kept getting asked for again. It grew into a full seminar, and over the years since, into the Stairlift Academy®, through which we've now trained hundreds of occupational therapists, OT assistants, grants officers and housing surveyors in how to specify stairlifts correctly. We still run it the same way it started: a presentation first, followed by a hands-on demonstration with live equipment at our showrooms in Calne and Ferndown, so people can try the products for themselves and see the differences between them.

Occupational therapists come back to us repeatedly for this training, and many bring their clients to our showrooms afterwards for joint assessments. You can find out more about the Stairlift Academy here.

We're BHTA members, adhering to the British Healthcare Trades Association's code of practice, which is approved by the Trading Standards Institute specifically to protect people buying mobility equipment.

We're an endorsed Which? Trusted Trader, vetted and continuously monitored for quality of service and compliance. We were awarded Which?'s Distinction in Customer Service in June 2020, and Which? Trusted Trader of the Month in April 2024. At the time of writing we have 76 verified reviews on Which? Trusted Traders with a 100% recommend rate, and you can read every one of them directly on their site.

Both memberships mean that if something ever goes wrong and you're not satisfied with how we've resolved it, there's independent arbitration available. It's not something we expect you to need, but we think it matters that it's there for complete peace of mind.

We're also an approved contractor for Disabled Facilities Grant work with local authorities across our coverage area, regularly trusted with DFG-funded equipment including stairlifts, home lifts and wheelchair lifts. That's a different kind of check to a customer review: local authorities have their own vetting process before they'll approve a contractor.

Not sure where to start, or how to compare us against anyone else? Our guide on how to choose a stairlift company you can trust walks through exactly what to check, and how, before you decide on anyone.

Our Service Promise

When you invest in a stairlift or home lift, you want to know you're dealing with the right people, not just for the installation, but for every service, repair or removal for however long the lifts is installed. So we promise to:

• Make you feel valued and looked after. We're proud of our record in customer care and we're always working to exceed expectations.
• Train our staff properly, so you get first-class, knowledgeable advice and workmanship every time.
• Always be reliable, and do what we say we'll do.
• Offer good value products and services that are the right solution for you. We won't ever sell you anything you don't need.
• Be honest, fair, open and transparent, with staff who are courteous and respectful in your home.