- Conference
- 2025 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 21 February 2025
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes that it is 30 years since the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 first gave disabled people the right to request reasonable adjustments at work.
When the Equality Act became law in England, Scotland and Wales in 2010 the duty to make reasonable adjustments was included. The DDA remains in force in Northern Ireland.
Despite this, our 2023 Equality Survey found that disabled members still struggle to get the adjustments they need. In local government 39% of disabled members were refused some or all of the adjustments they asked for and, shockingly, another 11% didn’t even receive a response to their request.
When reasonable adjustments were agreed, disabled members in local government reported long waits before they were put in place. Less than half of adjustments (43%) were made within a month, 26% took up to six months, 12% over six months and 8% of disabled members had to wait for over a year to receive the support they needed.
UNISON is a founder member of the Disability Employment Charter (the charter). The charter asks that the government introduce a statutory two-week limit for employers to respond to reasonable adjustment requests.
This does not mean implementing all reasonable adjustment within two weeks, but employers will be required to let the person who made the request know if it is agreed or not within two weeks. If it is agreed they should provide a reasonable timescale for putting the adjustment in place. If refused the employer should also say why they don’t believe the request is reasonable.
Other workplace adjustments the charter asks for include:
1) The right to request flexible working from day one of a job;
2) The right to paid disability leave for assessment, rehabilitation and training;
3) Increase in statutory sick pay to the European average;
4) A statutory right to facility time for trade union equality and disability reps.
Some, but not all, of these are included in the Employment Rights Bill but employers do not need to wait for a change in the law to make the changes.
Over 225 employers have signed up but disappointingly fewer than 20% of these are in workplaces where UNISON organises. Only six councils are currently named as signatories on the charter’s website.
Reasonable adjustments aren’t just something that is nice to have. They are essential to the health and wellbeing of disabled members. Without them, disabled members can miss out on training, development and promotion opportunities, be put through difficult sickness absence hearings, targeted for redundancy, forced to reduce hours or even leave their jobs altogether.
Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to work with the National Disabled Members Committee to:
a) Develop a campaign targeted at local authorities that encourages all local government employers to sign up to the Disability Employment Charter;
b) Write to the Leader of every council in the UK explaining the benefits of signing up to the Disability Employment Charter including a draft motion for their council to agree;
c) Work with Labour Link to campaign for the government to introduce a statutory two-week time limit for all employers with over 250 employees to respond to reasonable adjustment requests;
d) Bring a report on progress made, including the number of new councils signed up to the charter, to Local Government Conference 2026.
