Contents
DPOs’ verdict on Disability Action Plan: weak, grudging and just a list of empty promises 1
DNS analysis suggests ministers are wrong about rise in out-of-work disability benefits 5
Victory for disabled campaigners as council backs down over ‘fair care’ policy 7
MPs are told accessible housing is at breaking point… and they are partly to blame 10
Government must end years of delays and fix accessible housing crisis, MPs are told 11
Contracts reveal how companies should carry out benefit assessments over the next five years 14
Covid inquiry hears of ‘gulf between aspiration and deed’ within Scottish government 16
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17
DPOs’ verdict on Disability Action Plan: weak, grudging and just a list of empty promises
Disabled people’s organisations have dismissed the government’s new Disability Action Plan as a series of “empty promises” that fail to address the “dire situation” disabled people are facing.
The plan, and its 32 “practical actions”, was launched by disability minister Mims Davies on Tuesday, following a 12-week public consultation that took place last year.
All 32 actions appear to be low or zero budget measures, and there are no striking new policies, and apparently no new legislation or spending commitments before the general election.
The plan is intended to run alongside the longer-term National Disability Strategy, which was heavily-criticised by a cross-party committee of MPs last year.
That report by the Commons women and equalities committee said in December that the disability strategy was merely “a list consisting mainly of pre-existing departmental actions with minimal strategic thinking behind how those actions interact”.
Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) this week delivered a similarly critical response to the action plan.
They described it as “weak” and said it failed to address key cost-of-living concerns, while ignoring the need for urgent action in areas such as social care, accessible housing and government reforms that are set to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA).
Only last week, the DPO Forum England called for the action plan to include wide-ranging action on the WCA, scrapping care charges, reform of the Mental Health Act, disability hate crime, accessible housing, emergency evacuation plans from high-rise buildings, and other key areas.
Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, a member of the forum, said: “This is a plan about what non-disabled political actors are willing to offer to disabled people, it is not based in our rights or the social model.
“It is not what we need, rather it is what a disablist government think they will grudgingly offer.
“We need co-produced transformation as detailed in the DPO manifesto, incorporation of the UNCRPD* into domestic law and an end to the social care crisis and the abusive DWP.
“None of this will be possible under continuing austerity.”
Among the 32 actions, the government has finally pledged to re-introduce financial support for disabled people who want to seek elected office – following two previous short-lived funds that successive Conservative-led governments set up and then scrapped – but not until after the general election.
The government’s Disability Unit will bring together academics, disabled people and “decision-makers” for a conference on disability and adapting to climate change.
It will also develop an “online information hub for families with disabled members” and “work to improve the evidence base” on disability and domestic abuse, as well as building an “online hub of information” for local authorities on how to create accessible playgrounds.
The government will “explore” a potential bid to host the 2031 Special Olympics summer games, set up a working-group to “make recommendations to the government on how to improve support for people with guide and assistance dogs”, and set up a disabled people’s experience panel to work with the Disability Unit on issues raised by the action plan consultation.
There are also pledges that 10 Downing Street will “work to provide” British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters who will be present for all its “major press conferences and briefings” from this spring, while the Disability Unit will “explore steps to set up a new survey on disabled people to address gaps in evidence”.
Reactions to the action plan from DPOs have been uniformly negative, with all those contacted by Disability News Service highlighting the government’s failure to address the major issues affecting disabled people, such as the cost-of-living crisis, social care charging, disability hate crime, a hostile Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and inaccessible housing and transport.
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, described the plan as “a list of research, evidence and engagement, either on issues which are not a priority or where solutions have been known for a while.
“At a time when disabled people are struggling to make ends meet, hate crime on the rise, the new punitive welfare reforms are looming, care packages are cut, employers’ attitudes are not improving, when there is a shortage of accessible housing and parents of disabled children have to spend months in arguments and complaints to get minimal support, it is hard to see how any actions in the plan would make a tangible difference where it is most needed.
“We want the government to recognise that making significant improvements in our lives needs ambition and funding. We don’t see any of that in the plan.”
She said actions in the plan to make the government’s communications more accessible, including a BSL interpreter at Downing Street briefings, were “what the government should have done a long time ago to comply with the Equality Act”.
One member of the steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) described the document as a “disability inaction plan”.
Linda Burnip, a DPAC co-founder, said it was hard to comment on the action plan because of how little it offered.
She said it offered a “plan for councils to build accessible playgrounds but apparently no extra money for that, nothing about housing, transport, social care, accessibility generally, healthcare, or aids and adaptations people need to live independently”.
Professor Peter Beresford, chair of Shaping Our Lives, said: “This is a government which yet again has announced harsh new disability benefit restrictions as part of its populist pre-general election campaigning.
“It is a government which following promise after promise still has done nothing to get crisis-ridden social care policy back on track.
“It is an administration which has consistently ignored the views of disabled and older people about the care and support they need, leaving ever-increasing numbers without support, isolated and trapped.
“Yet now it expects us to forget its terrible track record and sign up to the empty promises of its latest Disability Action Plan, to build up our hopes and get involved as if it is to be trusted.
“Shaping Our Lives will take the government’s disability prospectus seriously when and only when it begins seriously to address the DPO forum’s programme of demands to secure older and disabled people’s rights.
“Sadly, we seem as far away from that as ever.”
In a joint statement, Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London and Disability Peterborough said the actions set out in the government’s plan were “weak”, while too many “don’t go far enough”.
They said: “Despite acknowledging the dire situation for disabled people, the government has failed to include any impactful actions that could have been delivered before the general election.”
They pointed to policies that could have been announced, such as re-instating the Access to Elected Office Fund, implementing the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s recommendations on personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs), implementing minimum accessibility standards for new-build homes (see separate story), scrapping the proposed changes to the WCA or committing to increase financial support for disabled people.
They said: “The Disability Action Plan is about what non-disabled policy-makers are willing to offer us, it is not a plan which protects or enhances our rights or demonstrates an understanding of the social model of disability.
“It is not what we need, rather it is what a disablist government has grudgingly offered.
“We need co-produced transformation as detailed in the Disabled People’s Manifesto, incorporation of the UNCRPD into domestic law, an end to the social care crisis and the inhumane DWP policies and processes.
“We call on the government to deliver real transformation, and we call on everyone to take action in any way they can to call for the same.”
Amy Wells, senior communications and membership manager for National Survivor User Network, said the action plan was “very weak, with actions that don’t go nearly far enough and [have] very little potential to affect much-needed transformative change”.
She said there was no meaningful action on the cost-of-living crisis and “no reference at all to the harm caused to disabled people, including those living with mental ill-health, trauma, and distress, by our inadequate and hostile social security system”.
She said: “Sitting alongside the flaws of the National Disability Strategy, this plan inspires no confidence that the government is willing to commit to accountability in implementing equality legislation, such as the UNCRPD, or tackling the many current policy developments that will disadvantage disabled people, including the Back to Work Plan and the proposed changes to the work capability assessment.”
NSUN called on the government to commit to the “transformative, rights-based changes set out in the Disabled People’s Manifesto”.
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, described the action plan as “little more than tinkering around the edges”.
She told MPs on Monday: “The government have had consultation after consultation, and they have published different strategies, but it sadly remains the case that we have had nothing that actually delivers a better life for disabled people.”
Mims Davies, the minister for disabled people, told her the plan was “not just another consultation, but real, tangible action to change people’s daily lives, with 13 practical actions across 14 different areas” and was “about building a society that works for everyone”.
She said she agreed that “day-to-day life is too difficult for disabled people and their families”.
She added: “I would love to boil the ocean and to have fixed everything in the month or so I have been in the role, but I assure honourable members that irrespective of the perceived level of [my] role, I have the convening power and support across government.”
In the Lords, the disabled Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton pointed to the government’s decision not to draw up any plans to protect disabled people who rely on life-saving medical equipment in their own homes in the event of a power cut, its failure to implement the Grenfell inquiry’s PEEPs recommendations, and the action plan’s failure to address the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on disabled people.
*UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
8 February 2024
DNS analysis suggests ministers are wrong about rise in out-of-work disability benefits
New analysis of official figures appears to show – despite ministers repeatedly suggesting otherwise – that the proportion of disabled people on out-of-work disability benefits has remained roughly stable over the last 15 years.
Disability News Service (DNS) has been working for the last month* to examine government statements that suggest people with long-term health conditions and other disabled people have become far more likely to claim out-of-work disability benefits in recent years.
DNS has used Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data, and its calculations have been checked by two leading academics, Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger and Professor Sally McManus.
Both confirm that – despite significant limitations, or caveats, with the ONS data and the DNS conclusions – the figures appear to show that the proportion of working-age disabled people on out-of-work disability benefits has remained stable over the last decade.
DNS used two separate sets of ONS data to estimate the numbers of working-age disabled people, one from its UK-wide Labour Force Survey and the other from the England and Wales Census**.
Both sets of figures – using the Labour Force Survey data and the Census results – suggest that the proportion of working-age disabled people claiming benefits such as incapacity benefit, employment and support allowance and the disability-related components of universal credit, has fluctuated slightly but has remained fairly stable.
DNS is stressing that these conclusions need further examination, but the figures strongly suggest that there has been no significant increase in the proportion of disabled people on out-of-work disability benefits since 2010.
If this conclusion is correct, it should have an important influence on policy, as it suggests that political parties should focus more on improving the health of the population than on making it ever harder for disabled people to claim benefits.
Last September, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride suggested that increasing numbers of disabled people claiming out-of-work disability benefits were “holding back the labour market and the economy”, while he announced measures to tighten the work capability assessment.
The following month, prime minister Rishi Sunak told his party’s annual conference in Manchester that supporting so many disabled people on out-of-work benefits was “not good for our economy” and “not fair on taxpayers who have to pick up the bill”, and he called it a “national scandal”.
A briefing to journalists earlier in the week of comments that would be made by chancellor Jeremy Hunt had led to a spate of stories in right-wing newspapers, claiming that Hunt would “declare war on 100,000 work-shy benefit claimants” and would “turn the screw” on people who refused to work.
In November, Stride suggested that some people on out-of-work disability benefits were “taking taxpayers for a ride”.
The figures produced by DNS using the census figures and DWP data show that, although the number of people in Britain receiving out-of-work disability benefits rose from about 2.4 million in 2010-11 to about 2.8 million in 2020-21, the number of working-age people describing themselves as disabled (in England and Wales) also rose significantly in that period.
The DNS analysis shows that the proportion of working-age disabled people on those benefits actually fell from 50.7 per cent to 48.1 per cent over the decade.
Using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) figures, both the number of disabled people and the number of them on those benefits continued to rise substantially from 2010 until 2023.
The most dependable LFS figures are likely to be those from 2013 to 2023, although again there were changes in how they were calculated which mean it is difficult to draw firm conclusions.
But they appear to show an increase in the number of UK working-age disabled adults from about 6.6 million in 2013 to about 9.6 million in 2023, while the number on out-of-work disability benefits in that period increased from about 2.3 million to about 3.4 million.
During this time, the proportion of disabled people on those benefits fluctuated between 32 per cent and just over 35 per cent, while it was 35.10 per cent in 2013 and very slightly lower than that (35.06 per cent) in 2023.
Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, co-lead on the work, welfare reform and mental health programme for the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London, said the DNS figures were “newsworthy” and he concluded that “your point broadly holds”, despite several caveats.
He believes the rising number of people identifying as disabled could reflect changes in the benefits system.
But he added: “More and more people are saying that they have a limiting health condition/disability.
“Until we get to the bottom of why this is happening, our claims about the benefits system might be nonsense – and they might lead to wrong-headed or even actively harmful policies.”
Professor Sally McManus, director of the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London, said separate figures from the Health Survey for England – unrelated to employment or social security claims but covering the whole population – also show the proportion of people reporting bad or very bad health increased between 2011 and 2019 (especially in women), while the proportion reporting a limiting longstanding condition also increased.
She also pointed to the findings of Sir Michael Marmot, who showed four years ago that after a century of increases in health and life expectancy, these rises stalled from about 2011, while life expectancy for the first time went down among women in low-income neighbourhoods.
She said these other sources suggested that the DNS findings “of an increase in the proportion of people in the population who need disability support appears consistent with an impact of austerity measures on population health”.
She said the DNS figures suggest “a strong clear story” which appears consistent with other sources.
Despite asking to see the DNS figures, and how they were calculated, DWP has refused to comment on them, or to say if ministers now accept that the proportion of disabled people claiming out-of-work disability benefits has remained fairly stable over the last 10 to 15 years.
But it did not suggest that DNS had made any errors in its calculations.
Instead, a DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “We know one in five of those on the highest tier of health benefits want to work with the right support.
“That is why we are taking long-term decisions on welfare reform to help everyone who can work to access the health and financial benefits it provides.
“These include our £2.5 billion Back to Work Plan, which will help over a million people, including those with disabilities and long-term health conditions, to break down barriers to work.”
*Contact DNS if you would like to see the calculations
**The Labour Force Survey provides annual figures, while the census only takes place every 10 years, including in 2011 and 2021, although the census figures do not rely on comparatively small samples of the population, as the survey does
8 February 2024
Victory for disabled campaigners as council backs down over ‘fair care’ policy
Disabled campaigners have secured a significant victory over a local authority that threatened to force people with high support needs into residential care.
The grassroots group Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) had secured pro bono legal advice in its battle to persuade Bristol City Council (BCC) to abandon its draft Fair and Affordable Care Policy.
BRIL had argued that the draft policy breached the Care Act, the Human Rights Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In its response to a council consultation, which closed last week, BRIL said the policy was “fundamentally flawed, likely unlawful, and would cause misery to many disabled people and their family and friends in Bristol”.
It said many disabled people had experienced “significant worry and distress” since BCC published its draft policy last year, when Disability News Service (DNS) first reported BRIL’s concerns.
But just days after submitting its response, and following a much-praised column written by disabled journalist Frances Ryan in the Guardian, the council abandoned its policy.
The council is Labour-run under a Labour mayor, although the Green party has the most seats.
In a letter to Bristol Disability Equality Commission (BDEC), a body set up by the council two years ago, Cllr Helen Holland, the Labour cabinet member with responsibility for adult social care, said the council’s cabinet and its mayor had decided that “the policy will not be taken forward at this time”.
Holland said in her letter that the financial crisis facing every adult social care department in England was a result of chronic underfunding caused by “central government austerity over the last 14 years, as well as the lack of progress on long promised reform”.
She said she had noted “the strong concerns that some Disabled people in our city and nationally have raised” about the council’s draft policy.
And she asked BDEC’s chair, Alun Davies, to set up a new group that would “consider how to build a system to fairly allocate Adult Social Care funding within the agreed budget to meet the diverse needs of the population”.
Davies is a former acting chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s disability committee, and a former city councillor.
Mark Williams, BRIL’s co-founder, said they welcomed the withdrawal of the policy and hoped to “work in a positive way to help the council to deliver a fairer system”.
He added: “BRIL would like to thank everyone all over the country for their support and hope it will make other local authorities work in partnership with disabled people before doing anything that may harm their quality of life.”
But BRIL said it was still concerned by parts of the letter.
They pointed out that disabled people were not to blame for the financial crisis, and despite recognising the harm caused by 14 years of government cuts to local authorities, they said “councils must still make choices with communities, and decisions that are both lawful and in the interests of people they aim to serve”.
They also warned that the “allocation of support based on budgets, rather than need, may lead to unlawful decisions contrary to the Care Act 2014”.
And they said they feared that the new working group would not be independent and “genuinely co-produced with disabled people and our organisations” because its terms appeared already to have been set by the council.
BRIL also said that the decision to ask the new working group to produce a report by 1 October would pass responsibility for the decision onto whoever has control of the council after May’s local elections and will “only add to the worries of disabled people and families”.
One disabled person from Bristol told DNS that the council had failed to acknowledge the fear its consultation had caused among disabled people, and that Cllr Holland’s letter “clearly shows they haven’t accepted the concerns of disabled people, or the legal arguments made against their policy”.
He said: “Setting up an ‘inquiry’ led and controlled by themselves, with hand-picked representatives, is clearly an attempt to shut down any genuine dialogue or co-production.
“However, disabled people will not accept this. Neither will we forget that the council considered this unlawful, immoral and ableist policy was acceptable in the first place.
“By doing this they have not only kicked the issue ‘into the long grass’, but they have also laid a trap for disabled people, families, and our city as a whole, by delaying action until after the local elections.”
A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “At the invitation of Cllr Helen Holland, Alun Davies will be forming a group to develop a framework by October to meet the diverse needs of the city’s residents while fairly allocating adult social care funding within the agreed budget.
“All consultation responses received over recent months will be used to inform this work.
“Like all councils, we continue to face a cost-of-operating crisis after social care costs and demand have risen significantly over recent years.
“Despite this challenge, and continuing national austerity, we have delivered and will continue to deliver our duties in line with the Care Act.”
The draft policy (PDF) had said that disabled people could be offered a “residential or nursing home placement” if “a care package to remain at home would substantially exceed the affordability of residential care”, and it had warned that “exceptions” to this policy were “likely to be rare”.
If no agreement was reached about such a placement, the council would only offer funding for direct payments up to the cost of the residential care option, with the disabled person needing to make up the difference themselves to cover the rest of the support they needed to continue living independently at home.
BRIL’s response to the consultation had included a legal position based on pro bono advice from Oliver Lewis and Alice Irving, barristers at Doughty Street Chambers.
8 February 2024
MPs are told accessible housing is at breaking point… and they are partly to blame
MPs have been told that the provision of accessible housing in England is “at breaking point”, partly because of their own failure to act to end the crisis.
Members of the cross-party levelling up, housing and communities committee were hearing evidence this week from witnesses as part of their inquiry into housing for disabled people.
But Mikey Erhardt, policy and campaigns officer for Disability Rights UK, told them that decisions made in the House of Commons and by other organisations “have led to this crisis” and that disabled people had been “consistently failed”.
He said: “There is very little provision for accessible housing in this country, even less provision for accessible affordable housing, and even less provision for accessible, affordable housing in your local area.”
He said that one in five disabled people in social housing and one in three in private rented housing had an unmet housing need, while many were living with hazards such as damp, cold or mould that were exacerbating their long-term health conditions or impairments.
He told the committee: “Where we’re at now is that we are at a bit of a breaking point.
“I’ve spoken to people who have lived in inaccessible temporary accommodation for decades. They can’t even get basic [adaptations] made.
“They’re living trapped in housing and circumstances that mean they don’t feel like they can get out and maybe get a job, they can’t get out and be part of the local community.”
He told the committee that most of the barriers disabled people faced in accessing housing were caused by “policy failure”.
Erhardt also pointed to the “spiralling” cost of rented accommodation, and the government’s failure to implement the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s recommendations on personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs).
He said: “Across the board, the barriers are self-imposed. We have made decisions in [the House of Commons] and in other areas that have led to this crisis.”
He highlighted the government’s failure to launch a consultation on 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”.
Such a change would mean nearly all new homes would need step-free access to all entrance-level rooms, as well as facilities and other features to make them more easily adaptable over time.
The government announced in July 2022 that this consultation would happen, and it is now more than three years after an earlier consultation ended, in December 2020.
Erhardt said: “We’re waiting years and years and years for no movement on raising standards on new builds.
“The impact is that we’re simply not building anywhere near the accessible homes that we need, and that developers have an outsized hand and role in shaping provision across the country.”
Christina McGill, director of social impact and external affairs for Habinteg Housing Association, which specialises in accessible homes, told the committee that Habinteg’s last review of local plans found only about 23 per cent of planned homes in England were set to be built to the M4(2) standard.
She said that bringing in M4(2) as the “baseline” would increase the supply of inclusive homes “dramatically”, and it would also mean that the disabled facilities grant budget would stretch further.
But she said it was also important to impose a target for homes built to the M4(3) wheelchair-accessible standard.
She said that work carried out by Habinteg in 2020 (PDF) found that only 76 local plans drawn up by councils (less than a quarter) were specifying that any homes at all should be built to the M4(3) standard, which meant there was “an enormous postcode lottery across the country”.
She said Habinteg would like to see a minimum of 10 per cent of new homes built to M4(3) “because we’re in a catch-up situation, much as London has been, and London has been working on that kind of policy principle for a long time”.
8 February 2024
Government must end years of delays and fix accessible housing crisis, MPs are told
Disabled campaigners and allies have called on the government to act urgently to fix the “broken” system of accessible housing in England, after years of delays.
They have told a committee of cross-party MPs in written evidence that it is impossible for disabled people to access accessible, affordable homes because of a “chronic shortage” of properties.
They were providing written evidence to the Commons levelling up, housing and communities committee as part of its inquiry into housing for disabled people.
Some said they believed the system was being run for the benefit of profit-making developers, rather than disabled people.
Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), in a joint written statement, told the committee: “The distribution of responsibility across government, local authorities and developers has created a broken housing system that responds only to developers’ whims and large profit margins rather than the rights of Disabled people.”
They said it had become “impossible for us to access the stable, affordable, and secure housing we need”.
Disabled campaigner Fleur Perry, who threatened the government with legal action four years ago over its failure to take action to solve the crisis in accessible housing, told the committee that the current situation was “a hustle”.
She wrote: “By building houses that do not match the accessibility needs of the population overall, developers are saving money, but harming the health and opportunities of millions, whilst creating an increased obligation on government to fund adaptations.
“They are passing a cost on to the taxpayer to fix their mess and hurting people.”
Many of those who submitted written evidence to the committee called on the government to fulfil its promise to introduce stricter accessibility standards for new homes.
DR UK and GMCDP said the country was “not building anywhere near enough accessible or adaptable homes”, and they called for the “immediate implementation of the national new build accessibility standards”.
Inclusion London said in its written evidence to the inquiry that it was “disappointed” that the government had not yet fulfilled that promise.
It said: “Continued delays only mean a poorer quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Disabled people living in unsuitable housing.”
Part of the committee’s inquiry will examine progress made since the government published the findings of a consultation into raising accessibility standards for new homes in July 2022, and announced a further consultation on the detail of the changes.
Disability News Service (DNS) revealed last July how the government had been criticised for a “disgraceful” failure to keep its promise on introducing these stricter standards.
The government said in July 2022 that it would consult on new 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 mean nearly all new homes would need step-free access to all entrance-level rooms, as well as facilities and other features to make the homes more easily adaptable over time.
But the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has yet to launch the consultation, more than three years after an earlier consultation ended, in December 2020.
The government’s own disability and access ambassador for housing, Vanessa Dockerill, strongly implied criticism of the government in her written response to the committee’s inquiry, calling on the government to introduce the new rules “without further delay”.
She wrote: “Right now, government should implement the preparatory steps to establish the M4(2) accessible and adaptable homes standard as default regulatory baseline without delay.”
She said the lack of information on a timetable for implementing the new standards was “proving challenging for Developers to prepare and position themselves for the pending change and, as such, potentially delays the positive impact of the changes”.
Many of those who contributed written evidence to the committee also called for improvements to the disabled facilities grant (DFG) scheme.
DR UK and GMCDP said the system was “failing” and was “not fit for purpose in its current form”, while Inclusion London said disabled people’s access to adaptations through DFGs was “a postcode lottery due to the maximum grant amount being set at £30,000 in England and the arbitrary nature of the means-test”.
Inclusion London told the committee: “Issues with DFGs prevent Disabled people from living safely and independently in our homes.”
Perry said the upper limit for a DFG was “far too low to cover major works” such as an extension that would allow a wheelchair-user to have a ground-floor bedroom and bathroom.
She suggested the government should introduce a new grant that could be put towards buying an accessible house, set at the same level as a DFG and “designed to cover the gap between the costs of an accessible property and an inaccessible property in the same area”.
DNS reported last summer that the Department of Health and Social Care had admitted that three consultations on improvements to the DFG system were “not currently being taken forward”.
One consultation was to examine proposals to increase the upper limit for an individual adaptation, currently set at £30,000, although councils can increase this on a case-by-case basis.
An independent review of DFGs, commissioned by the government, recommended an increase in December 2018.
Another consultation was to examine simplifying the means test underpinning the DFG system, which the government said was “complex and can be difficult to navigate”.
And the third was to examine how DFG funding was allocated to local authorities to “help ensure better alignment with local demand so that more adaptations reach those who need them most”.
8 February 2024
Contracts reveal how companies should carry out benefit assessments over the next five years
Key details reveal how four private sector providers have been told to carry out health and disability benefit assessments over the next five years, after being awarded £2.8 billion-worth of contracts by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The contracts were awarded last year to outsourcing giants Capita, Serco, Ingeus UK and Maximus to provide “functional health assessments” from September this year across the UK.
In each of five UK areas, each contractor will be responsible for providing assessments for personal independence payment (PIP), employment and support allowance, universal credit, and 15 other “specialist” benefits.
Disability News Service has now examined the five 940-page contracts and extracted some of the most important details that will affect disabled claimants, following a freedom of information request.
As with the assessment arrangements under the much-criticised current contractors Capita, Atos – which failed to win any contracts under the new DWP bidding process – and Maximus, face-to-face assessments will have to take place within a 90-minute public transport journey from the claimant’s home, which the contracts say should be regarded as “an absolute maximum”.
Only “a small minority” of claimants should face such a journey, the contracts say.
As with current rules, all work capability assessments (WCAs) and assessments for specialist benefits in England, Scotland and Wales will be carried out on DWP premises – at no charge to the contractor – unless DWP gives permission for them to take place elsewhere.
But contractors will be allowed to carry out PIP assessments in other premises.
All assessments will have to take place in ground-floor locations, which “must be easy for all customers to reach”, unless otherwise agreed in advance with DWP.
The contracts also state that claimants will only be allowed to “fail to attend” a PIP assessment or a work capability assessment once – including those carried out by telephone or at home – with their benefit application returned by the contractor to DWP after a second failure.
Claimants can be accompanied to their assessment by a “companion”, who will be allowed to contribute evidence.
And every claimant who gives at least one day’s notice will be entitled to have their assessment audio-recorded.
The contracts also state that only occupational therapists, nurses, physiotherapists and doctors will be able to carry out assessments, while paramedics will only be allowed to carry out PIP assessments, and only “doctors or physiotherapists” who have been “trained to write clerical reports” will be able to carry out WCAs in a claimant’s home.
All four contractors have also had to promise not to do anything that “embarrasses” DWP* or brings it into “disrepute” by “engaging in any act or omission which is reasonably likely to diminish the trust that the public places” in the department.
They have also all had to agree to act with the “highest standards of ethical behaviour and professionalism”, and with “respect and integrity” when it comes to transparency, while contractors and their sub-contractors must sign up to DWP’s Disability Confident disability employment scheme**.
In every year of their contracts, the companies will have to increase the number of disabled people they employ on those contracts, and increase the proportion of disabled people working on the contracts.
The successful bidders were Maximus in northern England and Scotland***; Capita in the Midlands and Wales; Serco in south-west England; Ingeus UK in London, south-east England and East Anglia; and Capita in Northern Ireland.
All the companies – except for Capita in Northern Ireland – will also be relying on “key sub-contractors” to deliver the assessments.
*Or the Department for Communities, in Northern Ireland
**All four main contractors have signed up to the scheme
***The Scottish government will continue to take responsibility for adult disability payment and child disability payment, its replacements for PIP and disability living allowance
8 February 2024
Covid inquiry hears of ‘gulf between aspiration and deed’ within Scottish government
The Scottish government failed to deliver on the rights of disabled people during the pandemic, even though it wanted to do so, two national disabled people’s organisations have told the UK Covid inquiry.
Inclusion Scotland and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) were delivering their joint closing statement to the section of the inquiry examining decision-making and political governance in Scotland.
They said the quality of the conversation on disability rights was better in Scotland than in Westminster, as was “the level of awareness of what needed to be done”.
But they also told the inquiry: “Scotland did not show itself to be particularly progressive in the actual delivery of human rights.”
Barrister Danny Friedman, from Matrix Chambers, who delivered the closing statement on behalf of Inclusion Scotland and DR UK, said there had been “a gulf between aspiration and deed”.
He pointed to the Scottish government’s failure to create a separate Covid plan for disabled people that “anticipated and prevented hardship” and would have addressed the “foreseeable collapse in care” and the difficulty sourcing food and other resources experienced by those both on and not on the list of those seen as being at highest risk from the virus.
He told the inquiry that disabled people had been missing from the pandemic disaster management system.
He said: “The notion that no-one should be left behind was effectively thwarted before the crisis started.
“That situation produced a chain reaction across all aspects of decision-making and government services, because everything that followed was reactive government, not proactive, and despite intentions, not especially collaborative.”
Despite disabled people already being in a “dire state of crisis” when the pandemic began, Inclusion Scotland and DR UK said the impact of public health and social measures on them “was not sufficiently mitigated”.
They said they had challenged how the UK government had ignored the rights of disabled people in earlier inquiry hearings, and now contrasted that with a Scottish government that “failed to deliver on their rights despite wanting to do so”.
Friedman pointed out how the Scottish government had – in the early stages of the pandemic – announced £350 million funding to support local services, and released £100 million to councils to stop social care being withdrawn or reduced.
But he told the inquiry: “Obviously these are important sums, but the money was not accompanied by sufficiently detailed programmes of how to channel it to the harder-to-reach, and how to transparently audit its effectiveness.
“It was not designed with and for DPOs and disabled people who would know how to do that.
“Its result was not as sufficiently redistributive or effective as it could have been.”
The two DPOs pointed out that a survey of 800 disabled people carried out by Inclusion Scotland in April 2020 showed that more than half of those who responded were no longer receiving health or care visits to their home, while one in eight had been forced to breach shielding rules to secure food or medicine.
And they highlighted the “serious shortcomings” with data collection during the pandemic.
Friedman told the inquiry that how little was known in this area was a “defining feature of residential and domiciliary care” and that, no matter the intentions, “the uncounted count for less”.
He said: “Pandemics teach us that data is absolutely an issue of human rights and humanity.”
8 February 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A Labour government would extend the full right to equal pay that now exists for women to black, Asian and minority ethnic workers, and disabled people, for the first time under radical plans seen by the Guardian. The legal right would be phased in to give employers time to adapt to paying all their staff fairly. The change would mean that equal pay claims on the basis of ethnicity and disability were treated the same as those made by women who, under existing laws, have more stringent protections: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/04/labour-plans-extend-equal-pay-rights-black-asian-minority-ethnic-staff
“Distressed and angry” campaigners have slammed county councillors for making “offensive and ignorant” comments about disabled children in Warwickshire. At the meeting, one councillor questioned the increase in diagnoses, asking: “Is it something in the water? Why are there so many people now jumping out with these needs? Where were they when I was at school?” After being told by a council officer that many such children would have been in institutions in the 60s or 70s, he said: “They must have had better ways of dealing with them. Let’s go back to some of those ways.”: https://rugbyobserver.co.uk/news/campaigners-slam-warwickshire-councillors-offensive-and-ignorant-comments-about-children-with-special-educational-needs-and-disabilities-48224/
A man who travelled to Gloucester by train from Bristol had to then get a Bristolian taxi to pick him up due to the lack of accessible vehicles at his destination. The shortage of wheelchair accessible vehicles prompted a council meeting where others shared their experiences: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87npzxmd3do
Derby County have hosted a forum for disabled supporters to discuss ways of making football stadiums more accessible. About 50 delegates from football clubs around the Midlands attended the event. The forum was organised by the disabled-led charity Level Playing Field, which works to improve disabled access and facilities at sporting venues: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-68223637
8 February 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
