Disability Rights UK Our Voices, a group of organisations run by and for disabled people,including Disability Sheffield, is calling on the government to delay the Disability Strategy pending a full and open engagement with disabled people.
The group has sent a letter to highlight their serious concerns and disappointment with the government’s engagement on the proposed National Strategy for Disabled People. This includes both the timetable and the methods used to engage disabled people and their organisations and the “disjointed and somewhat chaotic approach to engagement and insight gathering”.
“As the deadline for responses to be considered in the development of the strategy is 13 February 2021, this has given just 4 weeks to respond, which is far too short, and is made all the more challenging by the pandemic. Our Voices would like to see the release of the strategy postponed until the summer to allow all the responses to the survey collected until 23rd April 2021 to be considered in the strategy, but more importantly, to give time to undertake a genuine engagement exercise with disabled people and their organisations.”
ARTICLE UPDATE:
The Government have decided to “extend the deadline for contributions to be woven into the strategy. The new deadline is 28 February giving two more weeks to submit a response. The survey will still stay open until 23 April to help inform the delivery of the content of the strategy”.
You can view the letter, to which Disability Sheffield is a signatory, in DRUK’s news article here.
The link to the survey is here.
