Disability Equality Scheme

The London Development Agency (LDA) is the lead Regional Development Agency (RDA) on equality issues and in this role we have been working with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to produce our first Disability Equality Scheme (DES) to introduce a public sector duty to promote equality for disabled people.

It describes our journey so far and our next steps to ensuring that the LDA plays its part in creating a city where disabled people can live in equality with non-disabled people.

Achieving disability equality lies at the heart of our core objective, leading the economic development of London as a world city. Failure to enable access for disabled people to the labour market and entrepreneurial activity is also economically inefficient and wasteful of a significant pool of skills and abilities in London.

• Disability Equality Scheme PDF 
• Disability Equality Scheme RTF
  
• Disability Equality Scheme Easy Read front cover PDF
• Disability Equality Scheme Easy Read version PDF

This scheme is also available in Easy Read, large print, Braille, audio cassette, Easy Read and in plain word CD Rom format. If you require the DES in other formats or languages please let us know.

Review of our Disability Equality Scheme

From 4 December 2007 we will commence a review of our Disability Equality Scheme to help us evaluate our performance on the actions we took to promote equality for disabled people over the past year.

This will involve a review of our progress against the action plan, recent consultation and research findings, monitoring information, results from our impact assessments and our project outputs.

The Independent Disability Equality Group (formerly IDG) will play a central role in the review of our Scheme and to inform our future work on disability equality. Below is a summary of the findings of our review.

• The 2006 - 2007 Disability Equality Scheme (DES) review DOC

Background

The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 places a duty on the public sector to promote disability equality and set out its plans to do so by December 2006. We do not see this new legislation as a duty but as an opportunity to deliver our core aim of economic growth.

As the lead Regional Development Agency on equality, we have taken the initiative and developed a pioneering Disability Equality Scheme ahead of new legislation in December 2006.

To prepare the scheme, we set up a skilled Independent Disability Group (IDG) whose knowledge and experience helped play a pivotal role in developing the disability framework.

The new legal duties will also mean that businesses will need to ensure disability equality is part of their business practices as the public sector will be looking at ways to build disability equality into procurement and tendering processes. For example, if a contractor is interested in getting involved in the LDA's work on the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, they will have to ensure disability equality is part of how they run their business.

The DES development has been a learning process in partnership with disabled people and we look forward to working with disabled people in delivering our commitment to disability equality.

The LDA as part of the Greater London Authority (GLA) group shares the Mayor's vision for disability equality which states that the GLA Group should:

• Promote equality so that disabled work people who live or work in or visit London can enjoy their full human, social and political rights free from discrimination.
• Challenge and eradicate discrimination against disabled people.
• Provide responsive and accessible services for all Londoners.
• Embrace London's diversity as a source of strength and opportunity.
• Promote equality for disabled people in the mainstream.
• Ensure that our workforce reflects the diverse population of London and encourage exemplary employment practices in the public, private and voluntary sector across London.