Disability is not seen as a big issue

Employers invest "significantly less in disability compared to race or gender", according to a new report from the Employers Forum on Disability (EFD)

The EFD, an umbrella organisation focusing on disability as if affects business, represents over 400 organisations employing 20% of the total UK workforce.

Its report is based on a survey that attracted responses from 80 public and private sector employers and found that:

* 90% of organisations had an allocated budget to support race equality, 68% had one for gender equality, but under half (48%) had a disability equality budget;

* just 43% had policies to support disability equality - policies on race and sex equality were present in 89% and 74% of employers respectively; and

* disability action plans and budgets are concentrated in employers' human resource and property services departments, with little over a third (36%) of organisations setting disability goals in other departments; and

* only a quarter (26%) of organisations use the results of consultation with disabled employees to help set disability goals and policies.

"It would seem disability and disability discrimination are still regarded as different to - and less important than - race and gender," said EFD chief executive Susan Scott-Parker.

The EFD will be launching an enquiry into the issue, and will invite stakeholders concerned with the various strands of diversity to consider the implications of its survey's results on the government's plans to create a single equality body.