THE SHOCKING DISABILITY EMPLOYMENT GAP FOR DISABLED PEOPLE

The employment rate for disabled people in London stands at 46.5%. This means that some 370,000 disabled Londoners are out of work. What a waste of valuable talent!

The equivalent employment rate for non-disabled people stands at 85% which means that the disability employment gap in London stands at 38.5 percentage points.

Sadiq Khan – Mayor of London

The mayor had a vision for London of a “fairer and more equal society.”There has been progress in increasing disability employment in recent years but average figures across the capital show significant variations. For instance, there is a disability employment rate gap of 20 percentage points in Richmond to over 50 percentage points in Hammersmith & Fulham.

To deliver the Mayor’s vision the report (produced by the ‘Social Marketing Foundation’) argues that he needs to leverage his role in convening and co-ordinating pan-London work to deliver a fundamental shift in the approach to increasing disability employment.

This new approach should mean establishing a ‘Disability Employment Taskforce’ with the remit of co-ordinating action, testing new approaches and reporting on progress towards increasing disability employment right across the capital. And success would deliver significant health, well-being and economic benefits as well as significantly reducing benefit expenditure in London