Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which bodies provide independent validation of organisations seeking Disability Confident Leader status or renewal of that status.

The Disability Confident scheme has over 19,000 members and they report over 12 million employees working in their organisations. The scheme is designed as a learning journey with all employers starting at Level 1 and encouraged to progress through the scheme to Levels 2 and 3. As they progress on their learning journey, we expect they will continue to increase and share their understanding with employees and put in place effective and inclusive policies and procedures in support of disability employment.

The range of suitable validators of organisations seeking Disability Confident Leader status or renewal of that status is explained in the scheme guidance. Most validations are undertaken by existing Disability Confident Leaders, although the full list is:

• existing Disability Confident Leaders
• disabled employees, customers or people in the local community
• local diversity and inclusion groups
• local disability organisations or network groups
• disabled people’s user led organisations (DPULOs)
• recognised accreditation organisations whose accreditation covers the components of the Disability Confident Employer self- assessment
• disabled stakeholder groups or forums
• national disability network groups
• national disability organisations
• internal diversity and inclusions groups/forums

The scheme encourages businesses to choose an organisation suited to their business size, that can provide a proportionate level of challenge based on their own knowledge, lived experience, skills and expertise.

Disability Confident Leaders have had their own self-assessment independently validated and demonstrated a high level of commitment and success in creating inclusive workplaces. This experience equips them to be able to support others through the process sharing their knowledge and skills, to assess and validate other organisations effectively.

Other organisations able to validate businesses seeking to become or renew Disability Confident Leader status have specific expert knowledge of disability related issues in the workplace and / or have lived experience of disability.

As part of the work, we have begun to strengthen the scheme, we are considering options to make the validation process more robust, including improving the guidance for validators and reviewing the types of bodies permitted to undertake validations.

The overall number of complaints received by the Disability Confident policy team in the period 2022 to 2024 is approximately 220. Where the Department is made aware of any complaint raised against a Disability Confident employer for not meeting the scheme criteria, we would apply the process described in the Disability Complaints procedure. If after further examination, we consider the employer is failing to comply with any of the scheme criteria, the Department will give the employer an opportunity to remedy the situation. There have been no instances where an employer was given the opportunity to remedy the situation and failed to respond.