06 April 2007
Sixty-five public authorities could find themselves in court for not complying with their legal duty on disability.
The Disability Rights Commission this week named publicly funded organisations that have failed to produce the required disability scheme.
Non-compliance was fairly evenly spread across sectors, with 19 organisations in the NHS, 12 in local government, 14 in further and higher education, four fire services, four probation boards and 12 national organisations and cultural bodies.
Among those singled out were Norwich City Council, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Authority, the Museum of London and Channel Four Television. Together they represent 3.7% of the public sector organisations covered by the duty.
DRC chair Sir Bert Massie said: 'I'm really pleased that the public sector as a whole has done a great job in responding to the requirements of the duty, with more than 96% of organisations producing a scheme. The question is: why have a small minority failed to do so?'
The Disability Equality Duty, which came into force on December 4 last year under the auspices of the Disability Discrimination Act, obliges public sector organisations to prepare a strategy that actively encourages the inclusion of disabled people and eliminates discrimination.
The DRC had previously been coy about how it would deal with non-compliance, suggesting that a softly-softly approach might be more constructive. But Marie Pye, head of public sector duty at the DRC, was unapologetic about the decision to go public.
'I think if after a letter from the Office of Disability Issues and the DRC people still haven't produced a disability equality scheme, they deserve to be put in the public domain,' she told Public Finance.
'If we haven't got a scheme in the next few days, we'll be serving them with an enforcement notice.'
But Pye added that the DRC had no great desire to end up in court and expected several schemes to 'appear out of the woodwork' in the next week.
A spokeswoman for Norwich City Council acknowledged that its disability equality action plan had not been finalised. She said: 'The DRC is right in “naming and shaming” Norwich City Council for not having met this deadline. We hope to be in a position to go out to consultation on this in May, with a completed scheme ready for implementation in June.'
PFapr2007
