Official disability figures for Great Britain revised
The UK
Disability Rights Commission (DRC) has announced that it will now use a figure of "about 10 million people" to estimate the number of people covered by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in Great Britain. This updated figure is considered to be more accurate than the previous estimate of 8.6 million
disabled people which was based on outdated data from 1996/97. Not all of those 10 million people will use the term "disabled" about themselves but this estimate represents those thought to be covered by the DDA.
The estimate comes from the 2002-03 Family Resources Survey (FRS), an annual survey commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), and is based on the FRS finding that 22 per cent of their respondents had a long-standing limiting illness, or disability. The DWP have calculated this to equate to 9.8 million adults in total in Great Britain, of which about 6.9 million are people of working age with a long-term disability.
The DWP has announced that these estimates will be updated annually.
A User’s guide to disability estimates and definitions
is available from the Department of Work and Pensions. Please note that this guide requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.