Contents
MPs ask government key questions on impact of universal credit cuts bill on poverty and safety. 10
Covid inquiry hears of ‘huge rollback’ in rights and support since pandemic. 13
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week. 14
Bus company’s urgent probe after driver called for wheelchair-user who reported discrimination to be shot
A disabled bus passenger and campaigner has been left in a “state of constant fear” after he was shown “dehumanising” and “violent” messages exchanged between drivers that made fun of his weight and even called for him to be shot.
Arriva Midlands has now launched an “urgent” investigation after being shown screen shots of what it described as “distressing” messages.
Charley Jonstone-Brent, from Coventry, has been seeking justice for the discrimination he has faced at the hands of Arriva Midlands and its drivers for the last three years.
He has twice received compensation after the company failed to ensure its drivers were trained in how to secure his wheelchair safely on his trips to Leicester for hospital appointments, failures that left him with a broken ankle and two broken wrists.
He later had to complain again when a driver refused to allow him to board his vehicle and told him he was “banned” because he had previously complained about discrimination and safety issues.
This saw Arriva paying him a further £8,500 in costs and damages.
These cases of discrimination led to him working with Arriva to try to improve its staff training.
But now Jonstone-Brent has discovered that members of a private WhatsApp group of drivers had been exchanging offensive and threatening messages about him following last year’s stories by Disability News Service (DNS) about the discrimination.
The messages – seen by DNS – were sent late last year and made fun of his weight, accused him of lying about his injuries, and described DNS as a “fake news platform”.
Most disturbing, one of the staff members wrote: “Fucking shoot the fat c**t… if you see him tell him not to worry I’m at work earning him his benefits.”
Another one commented on a social media post which shows Jonstone-Brent standing away from his wheelchair: “This c**t!! Fat t**t can walk on my coach next time because I ain’t getting no ramp out.”
Another message said: “Hello everyone I’m collecting names to put to the union about this p***k in his wheelchair drivers are p****d about the whole situation and I want to know what the union are gonna do to protect us drivers so if your happy to have your name on a list for them then let me know….”
Jonstone-Brent is now considering further legal action against Arriva for harassment, discrimination and defamation, and has sent a “letter before action” to the company.
He told the company that the WhatsApp messages were “deeply distressing” as well as being “dehumanising, violent, and have left me in a state of constant fear”.
He wrote: “The knowledge that I was being targeted in such a way by people entrusted with public safety is deeply traumatic.”
He is now experiencing panic attacks and constant anxiety and struggles to sleep, and he says he avoids public transport whenever he can, particularly Arriva vehicles.
His partner, Chloe Child, said she had never seen him so “visibly shaken” as he was after he saw the messages for the first time.
She said, in a statement for his legal case: “He immediately feared for his life. He hasn’t been the same since.
“Charley now struggles to sleep, experiences nightmares, and is anxious whenever we go out.
“He avoids public transport, even when it’s the only practical means of getting somewhere.
“He constantly checks his surroundings, is hyper-alert, and often panics when he sees an Arriva bus.
“I have to reassure him constantly that he’s safe, and even then, I know he’s just putting on a brave face.
“It’s heartbreaking to see someone so passionate about helping others feel completely crushed and afraid.”
Jonstone-Brent told DNS that he felt as though Arriva was not taking his concerns seriously and was just “chucking money at the situation to try and keep me silenced”.
On 3 July – 15 days before he was shown the messages – he travelled to Milton Keynes and says he was subjected to abusive and hostile comments from a driver, including being told: “If you weren’t as fat as you are, you wouldn’t need to be in a wheelchair.”
He had been wrongly told he was not allowed onto the bus with an electric wheelchair, before the driver reluctantly allowed him to board after Jonstone-Brent called an Arriva manager.
After this incident, he is seeking an inquiry, compensation and an apology from Arriva, and a promise that it will retrain its staff.
Jonstone-Brent said: “These issues keep arising from the same company and are never being resolved.
“I feel let down, annoyed and saddened that I can’t make direct and easy journeys with them.
“It’s a massive inconvenience to me and Chloe that we now have to go out of our way and plan a journey three-to-four times as long as it does with the direct route which Arriva owns.
“I’m concerned that if this is happening to me, how many others are getting the same treatment and not speaking up about it?
“That’s why I’m campaigning for fairer, equal and accessible public transport for everyone.”
Asked about the messages, Ryan Dunne, Midlands area director for Arriva, said: “We are aware of the distressing screenshots that have been circulated.
“We have zero tolerance for the alleged conduct and we are undertaking an urgent and thorough investigation.
“We have been in touch with Mr Jonstone-Brent to unreservedly apologise, and we will continue to keep him updated.
“We are deeply sorry for Mr Jonstone-Brent’s experiences. We want to continue to work with him to further improve our services for disabled passengers.”
31 July 2025
UN asks serious questions of ministers after activists highlight ‘discriminatory’ mental health bill
A UN committee has raised serious concerns that the UK government’s mental health bill is breaching the international disability rights convention, with the legislation set to complete its passage through parliament when MPs return from their summer holidays.
The bill – based on draft legislation drawn up by the last Conservative government – has passed almost unnoticed through the Lords and the Commons, despite significant concerns raised by disabled campaigners.
They believe it falls far short of the fundamental reforms needed to ensure full human rights for disabled people, and that it will not stop them being subjected to forcible detention and degrading treatment.
There have also been protests by autistic people and people with learning difficulties, who believe the bill will not do enough to keep them out of mental health hospitals, or protect them from badly-run hospital services that have led to cruelty, abuse, and even deaths.
Now the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities has written to the UK government – through the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – to express its concerns that the bill will breach the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) if it becomes law in its present form.
It said it had “received credible information” that indicated such concerns.
The committee fears the bill will continue to allow disabled people to be detained in hospital on the basis of their mental health impairment, and the provision of mental health services that are not based on “free and informed consent”.
It also questions whether disabled people and disabled people’s organisations have been “closely consulted and actively involved” in drafting the bill.
It points out that it called as far back as August 2017 for the UK to change laws that allow “non-consensual involuntary, compulsory treatment and detention” of disabled people based on their “actual or perceived impairment”, while making a similar call last year.
The action by the committee follows concerns raised by the user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, which is run by people with mental health diagnoses.
Dorothy Gould, Liberation’s founder, said she had contacted the committee because she felt no-one within the UK parliament appeared willing to take notice of the concerns about the bill that have been raised by disabled people with lived experience of the areas it covers, while the government had been “utterly unwilling to listen”.
She said Liberation’s repeated calls for “full human rights” for people experiencing acute mental distress or trauma, and autistic people and those with learning difficulties, had been ignored, dismissed and misrepresented.
In contrast with “promising examples of genuine progress” in other countries, such as Mexico, the UK government “appears stuck in the past”, she said.
Gould said the bill “rests on the outdated assumption that some people with mental health diagnoses will always need to be detained against their will in psychiatric hospitals and treated under compulsion to protect them, mental health professionals and the public in general against serious risk”.
She pointed to a World Health Organisation and UN publication (see pages 15-16, box two) that concluded there was inadequate research evidence that these forms of coercion prevent risk, while they were actively discriminatory, and had resulted in serious harm, while there were also alternative and better ways of handling any risks.
She said: “Given this, the government’s argument that it can only give people with mental health diagnoses ‘more’ rights, not the full human rights held by members of the public in general, falls on very weak ground.
“It would be difficult, in fact, to describe the government’s approach as more than the continuing discrimination against people with mental health diagnoses that has dominated UK politics generation-in, generation-out.
“This discrimination must end once and for all.
“What we need instead is legislation which breaks away decisively from the current, health-dominated model, recognises us as whole people and ensures that we can live independently in the community in the same way as anyone else.”
Liberation will now be submitting further evidence before the UN committee challenges the UK government over the bill in Geneva next month.
Simone Aspis, Free Our People Now (FOPN) campaign manager for Inclusion London, welcomed the committee’s investigation.
She said FOPN was “very disappointed” that the government had introduced a bill that fails to implement the committee’s recommendations to end compulsory treatment within hospital settings, stop forced medical treatment, and set out plans to reduce and end institutionalisation.
Aspis said: “This bill starts from the wrong place, locking autistic people and people with learning difficulties up in inhumane institutions which deprives us of our liberty.”
FOPN will be submitting its own evidence to the UN committee, in which it will explain how the bill itself and the government, parliament, and the Department of Health and Social Care “have all violated our human rights”.
She said the knowledge that it was a Labour government that first ratified UNCRPD in 2009 “makes it worse”, with its actions showing it now had “total contempt” for implementation of the treaty.
The UN committee is seeking answers from the UK government by 11 August, and will then examine its concerns during its next session in Geneva, from 11 to 29 August.
It is already set to investigate concerns that the Labour government’s universal credit bill is a fresh attack on disabled people’s rights.
The Department of Health and Social Care said yesterday (Wednesday) that it would respond to the committee in due course and was confident the bill was compatible with UNCRPD.
The mental health bill will reform the Mental Health Act 1983, and it includes measures to end the use of police and prison cells as “places of safety” for people in mental health crisis; stop the “inappropriate” detention of autistic people and people with learning difficulties; and introduce statutory care and treatment plans.
The bill also gives patients more say over how they should be treated if they are sectioned under the act, and offers “stronger protections” for patients, staff and the public, the government says.
It also offers patients the right to choose a person to represent their interests and “greater access to advocacy” when they are detained, and it reforms the use of community treatment orders so they are only used “when appropriate and proportionate”.
31 July 2025
Network Rail faces fresh questions on inaccessible footbridges, after refusing to cough up for access
Network Rail is being questioned again over its failure to provide funding to ensure the accessibility of new infrastructure, after it claimed it could not afford to ensure a new footbridge would be accessible to people with mobility impairments.
The bridge will link new housing developments on either side of a railway line in the Kennington area of Ashford, in Kent.
But the two developers say the funding they have provided in exchange for planning permission for their developments is only enough for a stepped bridge, and not the ramped version that previously secured planning permission.
The bridge, which will be built by Network Rail, will replace a level crossing that has been deemed unsafe because of the greater number of people now expected to use it.
Access campaigner Doug Paulley has told Kent County Council he will seek a judicial review if it does not meet its Equality Act duties and oppose Network Rail’s application to divert the public right of way from the level crossing to the new bridge.
He has told the council: “It is unacceptable that you appear unconcerned at the diversion of public paths over step-only footbridges for the sake of saving Network Rail and the developers money, thus baking in inaccessibility for decades to come.”
Paulley, himself a wheelchair-user, said he found Network Rail’s failure to provide the necessary funding to be “profoundly offensive”.
He previously played a significant role in persuading Network Rail to withdraw plans to build an inaccessible bridge at Copmanthorpe, near York, which again would have seen a dangerous level crossing replaced by a footbridge that could only be reached by steps, rather than ramps.
Network Rail this week provided several excuses for not providing the funding necessary to ensure the bridge was accessible.
It told Disability News Service (DNS) that the bridge was being funded by private developers and that Network Rail was “not funded” to “make up the shortfall”.
It claimed it only had funds for “renewals” of old bridges and not for “enhancements”, such as replacing a foot crossing with a bridge, which meant the Kennington request was “outside the railways funding envelope”.
It also said that “the funding envelope for the railway has been hit by the same inflation that has hit the developers”.
And it said that a Network Rail “diversity impact assessment” had found that a stepped footbridge was “the right option”.
Christiane Link, a consultant and adviser on accessibility, and also a wheelchair-user, wrote this week about the Kennington bridge plans and Network Rail’s “recent track record of building footbridges across the UK that exclude disabled people entirely” which she said was an “appalling contradiction of promises on accessibility and equity”.
She wrote: “Network Rail’s reliance on cost savings all the time, as well as the claim that future upgrades might someday provide lifts, simply bakes in inaccessibility for decades.
“It tells disabled people they’re an afterthought, only to be accommodated if funds miraculously appear or pressure mounts.”
She added: “Research consistently shows that truly accessible infrastructure delivers significant health, environmental, and mobility benefits, reducing congestion and boosting local economies for all.”
Asked by DNS why she thought an inaccessible footbridge should be built, independent councillor Linda Harman, Ashford Borough Council’s cabinet member for planning, housing delivery and communication, said the council was disappointed that the accessible bridge could not be built but that “a pragmatic solution had to be found for all parties” and that it was “vital that a safe crossing is put in place as soon as possible”.
One of the developers, Quinn Estates, has previously suggested that the inaccessible, stepped bridge was “groundbreaking” and would provide “a template for the railway network in other parts of the country where footbridges require replacement, or the safety of existing level crossings are a cause for concern”.
Network Rail, the developers Quinn Estates and Barratt Redrow, and Ashford Borough Council, had all failed by noon today (Thursday) to say how much extra the accessible version of the bridge would cost.
A spokesperson for Kent County Council (KCC) said: “We are aware of the issue over the planning permission for a stepped bridge which has been granted by Ashford Borough Council.
“As the local highway authority, KCC is now processing the associated diversion order application as required.
“At this stage, we have not taken a formal position on the matter and are due to determine this soon.”
Network Rail is developing a growing reputation for claiming it is too expensive to ensure that new rail infrastructure can be accessed by disabled people.
Just two months ago, its decision to spend nearly £8 million building a new – inaccessible – footbridge was labelled an “appalling contradiction” of the government’s commitment to improving the accessibility of the public transport system.
A year ago, it was forced to apologise after admitting it had failed to spend £65 million of funding allocated to improving access at rail stations.
And two years ago, it made the “profoundly offensive” admission that it planned to build 17 inaccessible footbridges across England, Scotland and Wales.
31 July 2025
Labour must break its silence on accessible housing, say campaigners on 3rd anniversary of broken Tory pledge
Disabled campaigners have demanded that the Labour government finally breaks its silence and takes action to end the accessible housing crisis.
A year ago, Inclusion London – backed by campaign allies – took their demand for the new Labour government to act on accessible housing to the gates of Downing Street.
That protest was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of a pledge by the last Conservative government – which was never fulfilled – to take action to address the critical shortage of accessible homes.
Now Inclusion London – and other campaigning organisations – have used the third anniversary of that Conservative pledge to call again for stricter minimum accessibility standards for new-build homes in England.
They want all new-build homes to meet the M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard, and at least 10 per cent of all new-build homes to meet the M4(3) wheelchair-user standard that would make them suitable for a wheelchair-user to live in.
Laura Vicinanza, senior policy and stakeholder engagement manager at Inclusion London, said this week: “A year has passed but nothing has changed.
“Since Labour took office, they have remained silent.
“Inaccessible homes continue to be built across the country.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of disabled people are stuck waiting, often for decades, for an accessible social rent home, waiting for the safety and stability we need to be able to build a life.”
One in five disabled social housing tenants – and more than 400,000 wheelchair-users – live in unsuitable homes, while only 13 per cent of homes have basic accessibility features, she said.
And she pointed to the government’s commitment to build 1.5 million new homes during the current parliament while continuing to fail to make a “vital guarantee” on accessibility.
Vicinanza said: “Continued delays to raising standards only mean that more and more people will be forced to live in unsuitable conditions, unable to meet the basic needs we all have for a good life.
“Our fight ends when our basic housing rights and needs are met. Until then, we are not going away.”
Three years ago, Conservative ministers pledged to introduce rules that would force all new homes in England to be built to the M4(2) standard of accessibility, except for cases where this was “impractical and unachievable”.
This would have meant that all new homes would need step-free access to all entrance-level rooms, as well as facilities and other features that would make the homes more easily adaptable over time.
But the government opted not to introduce rules that would ensure a minimum proportion of new homes were built to the fully wheelchair-accessible M4(3) standard, with the decision on what proportion of new homes must be wheelchair-accessible to be left instead to local authorities in their local plans.
But the M4(2) rules were delayed as the Conservative government said it needed to consult on the detail of the regulatory changes, something which never happened.
Mikey Erhardt, policy lead for Disability Rights UK, said the government was essentially still relying on “the goodwill of developers to create the homes we all know we need”.
He said: “Little progress has been made to improving the realities of the housing crisis for disabled people.
“Just nine per cent of homes have the most basic levels of accessibility.
“The consultation on improving accessibility to new build homes closed in December 2020, with an announcement to improve standards in July 2022.
“Yet because of the appalling inaction of the previous and current governments, the crisis of inaccessible homes has been allowed to worsen.
“The Labour government must break its silence on this critical issue and commit now to 100 per cent of new build homes being built to improved accessibility standards and at least 10 per cent to wheelchair-user standards.
“These are small commitments in the grand scheme of things but would go a long way to rebuilding trust that the government is listening to us.”
Meanwhile, new polling for the Centre for Ageing Better shows two in three people (66 per cent) believe they would have problems moving around their home and carrying out everyday tasks without major adaptations to their property if they developed a health issue or serious injury.
More than three-quarters of those surveyed (77 per cent) said all new homes should be built to a standard that allows people to live independently if they become disabled or as they age.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “Everyone should be able to live in a home that meets their needs.
“That’s why we are determined to provide more accessible housing, as part of our ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes through our Plan for Change.
“We will set out our policies on accessible new build housing shortly.”
31 July 2025
MPs ask government key questions on impact of universal credit cuts bill on poverty and safety
A new cross-party report from MPs has raised significant concerns about the impact of the government’s disability benefit cuts and reforms on the poverty and safety of disabled claimants.
The Labour-dominated Commons work and pensions committee calls in the report for ministers to delay introducing billions of pounds of cuts to the health element of universal credit until it has carried out “an independent and comprehensive assessment” of the impact the changes could have on disabled people.
The report on the government’s Pathways to Work green paper warns that, even though the government’s universal credit bill was substantially watered-down during its process through parliament, the cut to the health element from April 2026 for most new claimants is still set to drive 50,000 disabled people a year into poverty by 2029-30.
And it calls on the government to explain what discussions it had with disability organisations about the eligibility criteria for its new “severe conditions” group, which will offer protection from the cut to the health element for a small proportion of new claimants.
It also asks whether the government has assessed the types of “serious conditions, especially mental health conditions” that might not qualify for the severe conditions group.
Among those disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and grassroots groups that gave evidence to the committee’s inquiry were Crips Against Cuts (CAC), Disability Rights UK (DR UK), Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel, Disabled People Against Cuts, and Inclusion London.
Among their criticisms, they attacked the government’s failure to consult on key elements of the green paper, with CAC suggesting to the committee that this had breached the UN disability convention and DR UK calling the Pathways to Work consultation “a sham”.
The report is one of the first government or parliamentary reports to point out that spending on working-age social security spending as a percentage of GDP* is “not much higher than it was in 2008”, despite repeated claims by politicians that it is spiralling out of control.
Inclusion London told the committee that spending was “not out of control” and that evidence showed the UK had one of the least generous social security systems in the OECD**.
Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, told the committee during its inquiry that the government had to cut disability benefits because there had been a substantial increase in health-related social security spending, but he accepted that overall working-age spending as a percentage of GDP was not much higher than it was in 2008.
The bill will introduce a small increase in the universal credit standard allowance, and the report calls on the government to give “serious consideration” to further increases before the end of this parliament (likely to be in 2028 or 2029).
The committee also warns the government that it will follow the progress of the personal independence payment (PIP) review “very carefully” to ensure that Sir Stephen keeps his promise that it will be co-produced with disabled people.
The universal credit bill is now just awaiting royal assent before it becomes law.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Resolution Foundation thinktank has suggested “concrete principles” for supporting employers to create more opportunities for disabled workers.
The Opening Doors report calls for an “improved” and “strengthened” Access to Work scheme, rather than scaling it back, as the Pathways to Work green paper suggests ministers are considering.
It also calls for mandatory reporting by employers on their disability employment gap and disability pay gap; incentives for employers to “reintegrate” workers after periods of sick leave, and to recruit new disabled workers; greater efforts to support part-time work where potential employees would struggle to work full time, including a focus on disabled recruits; and “a clear ambition to create better working environments for all workers”.
The report also dismisses claims by the last Conservative government that it had narrowed the disability employment gap, as previously reported by Disability News Service.
When factoring in the increased likelihood of people with lower support needs to describe themselves as disabled, the report concludes that disability-related labour market exclusion has in fact worsened over the last decade.
The report concludes: “The policies set out in this report offer a practical way forward, one that shares responsibility between the state, employers and workers, to give disabled people a fair chance to find and stay in work.”
Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, a research associate at the Resolution Foundation and one of the report’s authors, said: “The government has, rightly, set an ambitious target of 80 per cent employment.
“But it will fail to get anywhere close to this unless it tackles the huge employment gap faced by disabled people.
“While some metrics – that don’t account for the increased incidence of disability – seem to show a decreased employment gap for disabled people, prevalence-adjusted measures show that disabled people’s labour market inclusion has in fact been getting worse in recent years.
“Supporting this group into work will be a vital part of getting Britain working.
“Halving the disability employment gap would take the government more than halfway towards meeting its 80 per cent employment rate target.”
His co-author, Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Much of the debate around supporting disabled people into work has centred on reforming benefits to incentivise employment.
“But while important, this has neglected an even more central issue – the role of employers in helping more disabled workers to join, remain and thrive in the workplace.
“The government should do more to incentivise firms to employ disabled people, especially those who have been out of work for long periods.
“But employers need to do more in return.
“A new Right to Reintegration could help disabled workers back into work in the same way that maternity rights transformed women’s employment prospects a generation ago.”
*Gross domestic product, the size of the country’s economy in a particular year
**Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, whose 38 member countries include the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Mexico and Korea
31 July 2025
Covid inquiry hears of ‘huge rollback’ in rights and support since pandemic
Disabled people have undergone a “huge rollback” in their rights and social security support since the pandemic, a disability rights campaigner and adviser has told the Covid inquiry.
Despite politicians promising they would be “building back better”, Joanne Sansome told the inquiry that this had not happened for disabled people.
She said she believed there had been a “huge rollback with our rights and the benefits and the welfare reforms”, so politicians were not “living up to that statement”.
Sansome, who lives in supported housing in south Belfast and relies on personal care provided by care workers, said the “building back better” phrase had “rolled off their tongue every day during the pandemic”, even though there had since been “no evidence of it”.
Asked for the most important point she wanted to get across to the inquiry, she said the pandemic had shown that “co-production and deliberative democracy” – in which political decisions are made through discussion and debate among citizens – were “key to living up to that slogan of ‘building back better’”.
She said: “I think legislators have to get past the fear of it and embrace it… it’s an opportunity for everyone to be involved in the legislation that’s going to shape society and their daily lives.
“It’s an opportunity for everyone to have a voice, and everyone to be heard, and ensure that ‘nothing about us without us’ becomes reality in all legislation.”
Sansome, speaking on behalf of the Northern Ireland disabled people’s organisation Disability Action, is one of the few disabled people to have given direct oral evidence to an inquiry session about their pandemic experiences.
She was giving evidence as part of module six of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, which is examining the impact of the pandemic on the adult social care sector across the UK.
Because she was told she was “clinically extremely vulnerable” to the virus, she had to obey strict lockdown rules for more than 700 days during the pandemic.
She said the pandemic and its restrictions “had a lot of impact at the very beginning, especially, because staff were getting sick and because there was a shortage of PPE [personal protective equipment]”.
She said it had been “so scary” because people were being told to keep “social distance” and yet many of her support needs required “very close contact… so whenever they had no PPE or they were wearing cloth PPE, that you were being told wasn’t effective… that was really frightening”.
She described how her ties with Queen’s University Belfast allowed her to source PPE when there was a shortage at the beginning of the pandemic.
But she said staff shortages meant that, on one day, there were just two members of staff on duty to support 22 disabled residents.
She told the inquiry: “At that time I just kept thinking about my friends in other situations that lived in their own homes but needed care, and they weren’t getting any care.
“I know some people that were stuck in bed for days at the beginning because of the shortages.”
Sansome said that during the pandemic the internet had “brought the disability community very much closer together, as a global community, fighting for equality and rights that we had tried before but never succeeded”.
But she told the inquiry that this had fallen away “more than a little bit, since the world has got back to so-called normal”.
31 July 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Access to Scotland’s adult disability benefits should be made easier despite forecasts of a steep increase in claims and costs, an independent review has said. A report commissioned by ministers said the adult disability payment was a “great foundation” which was “significantly more compassionate” than benefits on offer in the rest of the UK. However, it said too many disabled people still found the system difficult to navigate, and eligibility criteria should be reviewed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6264ryxmv0o
Tim Hull can point to many achievements during his 56 years… but it is a life Tim has decided to end. His quality of life, he says, is “very, very low”. Tim has a medical condition – unrelated to his height – that weakens his muscles, and his health has declined rapidly over the past two years. It is the battles to get the health and care support he needs which have driven him to make the desperate decision: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c209pgq7rdro
A private equity-backed provider of care services to “vulnerable” patients across England is on the brink of insolvency, prompting Whitehall officials to draw up contingency plans for its collapse. NRS Healthcare, also known as Nottingham Rehab, is close to falling into compulsory liquidation after efforts to find a buyer were unsuccessful. The Official Receiver is expected to step in, owing to the importance of the services offered by NRS Healthcare, which provides living aids and equipment to older and disabled people: https://news.sky.com/story/official-receiver-may-step-in-as-council-care-provider-nrs-healthcare-nears-collapse-13404011
An award-winning homeless hostel in the constituency of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, has been lambasted after an independent investigation into the death of a disabled resident. Joe Black, 39, died after a drug overdose in 2023 at Holmes Road Studios in Camden, north London. He was a talented musician who had studied at the Royal Northern College of Music: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/28/london-homeless-hostel-failed-vunerable-resident-in-multiple-ways-before-fatal-overdose-review-says
31 July 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
