Disability

Scottish Government's 'Equality Evidence Finder' reckons that 32% of all adults in Scotland have a disability.

The last time Equality Here, Now checked the performance of Councils in Scotland as an employer in delivering equality for disabled people was in 2019.

The research carried out then found :

At the most basic level of scrutiny, Scotland’s local authorities have revealed in their reports published in 2019 that 2.16% of the entire local authority workforce in Scotland identifies as disabled. The Scottish government’s equality evidence finder reveals that Scotland, at 2018, has a national average of adult people identifying as disabled as being 32% of the population.

These basic numbers reveal all too clearly that Scotland’s local authorities are quite some distance from being even close to delivering employment equality, after having had 10 years of opportunity to make the aims of the Equality Act 2010 a reality for people looking to escape discrimination and gain equal access to employment. Given there are no obvious reasons why this should be the case, applying Occam’s razor would suggest the most likely reason for the failure is that there is a marked lack of appetite in local government for changing a status quo in a Scotland which is largely run by and for WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] privilege.

For Scottish government and the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] to be aware of this and not to actively intervene and drive the real change required, suggests WASP privilege is similarly indulged by government and the EHRC.

Equality Here, Now has researched the performance of Councils in Scotland as an employer of disabled people over a number of years, and the journey from then until now can be uncovered in the research reports published in 2017, 2015, and 2013.