Author: Neil Armstrong

Z2K has launched a new campaign action that allows people to quickly respond to the Health and Disability Green Paper – with an Easy Read guide for doing so also provided – allowing you to flag your MP about the Green Paper.

From Z2K:

‘The Government has finally published its long-overdue Health and Disability Green Paper, seeking views on their proposed changes to health and disability benefits, including assessments.

Despite the abundance of evidence demonstrating the need for fundamental reform of these assessments, this Green Paper lacks ambition and ignores clear failures of the system.

Nearly half of all people in poverty in the UK are either disabled themselves or live with someone who is disabled. This has to change.

Now is our opportunity to tell this Government that tinkering around the edges is not enough.

We want this Government to make a real and genuine commitment to working with disabled people, people with health conditions, and Deaf and Disabled people’s organizations (DDPO’s) to affect true change.

Have your say – let this Government and your MP know that DWP’s reforms to health and disability benefits must go further.

The template below is open for you to edit as you wish and if you have experience of disability benefits assessments, there is space to add your own personal thoughts and experiences if you would like to do so.

Here is a link to our consultation guide and Easy Read version.

After submitting the consultation response, you will also have the option to send our briefing to your MP. MPs have a duty to represent their constituents and we have the power to hold them to account. We don’t want them to just listen, we want them to act. Write to them today to ensure disabled people and those with health conditions receive the income they are entitled to and the dignified and respectful treatment they deserve.’

Tuesday 31st August 2021

DWP has published a new Green Paper: Shaping Future Support: The Health and Disability Green Paper

This Green Paper explores how the benefits system can better meet the needs of disabled people and those with health conditions. It was informed by extensive engagement with disabled people, people with health conditions, and their representatives, to hear about people’s experiences of DWP services and priorities for future change.

The consultation includes changes which could:

• Enable independent living and testing the role of advocacy so people who need extra help to navigate the benefits system get the right level of support and information first time. 
• Review how assessments are carried out including exploring the potential for longer-term use of telephone and video assessments and looking at how reassessments work including testing a new Severe Disability Group (SDG) for people with severe and life-long conditions that will not improve. This could see those who meet the criteria experiencing a more simplified application process, without the need for an assessment to receive financial support 
• Improve support for disabled people to help them start, stay and succeed in work through the Work and Health Programme, Access to Work and on personalising employment support, recognising that one size does not fit all. 

The consultation started with the launch of this Green Paper will last for 12 weeks. They want to hear from disabled people, people with health conditions, and their representatives about the approaches that should be considered to improve the system.

The Green Paper, along with accessible versions and a link to the consultation site, is now available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/shaping-future-support-the-health-and-disability-green-paper

Originally published by Clive Davis 23/8/2021

Difference North East is holding a meeting to gather opinions from disabled people across the region. They are currently talking to Newcastle City Council about their ‘Newcastle 2030’ recovery plans. Difference want them to make Newcastle the best city in the North for disabled people to live and work. Difference want them to know what needs to change to make this a reality.

Access and inclusion should be a top priority for local authorities, so we want to find out;

• What stops you from being able to enjoy your city/town?

• What changes would make the biggest difference for you? Please meet with them to share ideas and experiences and to make sure disabled people’s voices are heard.

When? They are holding the meeting twice, so you can choose which one to attend:

• Wednesday 28th July at 18:30-20:00

• Thursday 29th July at 10:30-12:00 (BSL Interpreted)

Please register to attend on their event page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/our-city-our-say-tickets-162678653231?utm_campaign=post_publish&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite&utm_content=shortLinkNewEmail

Wednesday 21st July 2021

Ministers are to spend £30 million on projects across England that could lead to more than 17,000 new homes, but they are refusing to insist that a single one of them is built to strict accessibility standards.

Despite announcing funding for more than 160 projects, ministers have imposed no requirement for any of the housing schemes to include any accessible homes.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) says the plans for better use of public land could see more than 17,000 new homes being built, with funding awarded through the Land Release Fund (LRF) and the One Public Estate programme.

But MHCLG confirmed this week to Disability News Service (DNS) that there would be no obligation for any of the projects to include a certain proportion of homes built to the M4(2) standard, which includes 16 accessible or adaptable features, or to the M4(3) standard, for homes that are fully wheelchair-accessible, or can easily be adapted to be so.

Instead, it will be left to local authorities – which set their own policies on how much new housing should be built to M4(2) and M4(3) standards in their own areas – to decide how many of the homes should be built to higher access specifications.

Cllr Pam Thomas, a disabled city councillor in Liverpool and chair of the city council’s corporate access forum, said the government’s failure showed “that the voice of developers is allowed to take precedence over the voice of disabled people”.

Disabled campaigner Fleur Perry, who has previously written to housing secretary Robert Jenrick to warn him that his failure to act on accessible housing could be unlawful, said the government’s refusal to set minimum numbers of accessible homes with the new funding was “a missed opportunity to build accessible housing”.

An MHCLG spokesperson said: “The number of accessible homes has nearly doubled in a decade and we have recently consulted on ways of improving the accessibility of new homes.

“Councils are best placed to decide how much accessible housing is needed in their area, and set these requirements in their Local Plans.”

But Perry said: “We know that 1.8 million people live in houses that do not meet their needs, and we know (from personal experience, anecdotes, and research) that this has a huge impact on the day-to-day lives of disabled people.

“We also know that some local authorities aren’t doing anything.”

She said that more than half (52 per cent) of local authorities have failed to include any accessible housing requirements in their Local Plan, which may be a breach of the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty.

And she pointed out that the Equality and Human Rights Commission found in 2018 that 84 per cent of local authorities surveyed did not feel that they had good data on the number of disabled people currently inappropriately housed.

She said this cast doubt on whether local authorities really were “best placed” to choose how much of the £30 million should be used to build accessible housing.

She said: “This is an assumption, not reality, and I will be writing to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ask them to reconsider.”

A consultation on whether the government should introduce higher accessibility standards for new housing in England ended last December, with ministers yet to announce their next steps.

Perry said: “We need more accessible housing.

“It’s a key component of independent living and the lack of accessible housing is a solvable problem.

“We know that this a national issue and I think that central government need to be acting. I look forward to reading the results of last year’s consultation.”

Thomas, who has a PhD on the physical inaccessibility of homes for owner occupation, said MHCLG’s response suggested that it was “out of touch with, or doesn’t care about, the research and reality of the dire shortage of accessible and adaptable housing”.

She said that the “doubling of a totally inadequate number of accessible homes in a decade means very little”, particularly as most of them appear to be in London, which introduced stricter standards for new homes in 2004.

Ministers have been repeatedly warned about the chronic shortage of accessible housing, with the equality and human rights watchdog warning three years ago that more than 350,000 disabled people in England had unmet housing needs, with one-third of those in rented accommodation living in unsuitable properties.

That same year, research by Disability News Service showed how representatives of the home-building industry were engaged in a countrywide campaign to defeat attempts by councils to ensure more accessible homes were built in their areas.

Thomas said Liverpool City Council had included a requirement in its draft Local Plan several years ago that 90 per cent of all new homes should be more accessible and adaptable for people with mobility limitations and 10 per cent should be easily adaptable for wheelchair access.

The local plan “is still going through the very long statutory process to gain the approval of the government’s planning inspector”, with developers objecting to the accessible housing requirement and insisting, she said, that “the case has not been made that accessible and adaptable housing is wanted or needed”.

She said: “We have been able to get the agreement of some developers through persuasion that it need not cost them any more to use inclusive design from the design stage, but because the law does not give us the power unless the Local Plan is approved, we cannot insist if the developers refuse.”

Only last August, the government was accused of “showing contempt” for disabled people after publishing an “utterly shameful” 84-page white paper on the future of the planning system without including a single mention of disabled people, disability or accessible housing.

And in January this year, DNS revealed how ministers had delayed publishing a report that called for more research into the benefits of accessible housing for up to four years. 

Despite its latest failure to address the accessible housing crisis, the government announced that the new funding was part of its so-called “levelling up agenda”.

Some of the funding will help to create feasibility studies and design work for potential development sites, while the LRF funding will support councils to regenerate mainly brownfield sites for housing by providing capital funding for infrastructure work.

10 June 2021. News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com