What the "Keep Britain Working" review recommended
The "Keep Britain Working" review has reported to the UK Government, setting out recommendations on what is needed to build inclusive workplaces, and to tackle ill health and disability in the workplace.
Over the past nine months, the review - led by the ex-chair of the John Lewis Partnership, Sir Charlie Mayfield - held over 150 meetings across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The team met with people with disabilities, including people with sight loss, employers, including at our roundtable event, and decision makers. They also received over 500 written submissions, including one from RNIB.
Reacting to the review, RNIB's Chief Strategy and Public Affairs Officer, Vivienne Francis, said:
“We cannot continue with a situation where people with sight loss are unnecessarily falling out of the workplace, whether that's because employers don't know how to support them or because of systems not working.
“Too many blind and partially sighted people remain locked out of work - with around 11,000 people with sight loss currently looking for employment.
“This review marks an important first step in fixing this and must be a turning point towards lasting change.”
What did the review find?
The Review highlights that just 53 per cent of disabled people in the UK are in employment. It identifies three persistent problems in the workplace: fear, lack of effective support and structural disadvantages faced by disabled people.
We welcome the review’s recognition of the structural barriers disabled people face. We know inaccessible recruitment processes, ill-informed employers, and poor access to assistive technology are blocking many blind and partially sighted peoples’ pathway to finding, securing and being retained in paid employment.
What did the review recommend?
The review sets out three steps for the UK Government to take.
The first, which the UK Government has now adopted, is to bring together a Vanguard taskforce. Sir Charlie Mayfield will co-lead the taskforce with Ministers, bringing together 60 employers, including British Airways, Google and Sainsbury’s, as well as disabled people, workers' representatives, a number of mayoral authorities, and health experts.
Over the next three years, the taskforce will develop and test a new strategy to deliver stronger support to disabled people in work, healthier working lives for older workers and better retention of people with physical or mental health conditions, and those who are neurodivergent.
RNIB is ready to support the Vanguard taskforce so we can make sure all employers have the right knowledge and support to deliver accessible and inclusive workplaces.
The second recommendation is to set up a Workplace Health Intelligence Unit to support the work of the Vanguard taskforce. This would build the evidence base for what works, ready for wider roll out from 2029.
We’ll be stressing to Government the evidence base needs to identify what works for different cohorts of people, including employees with sight loss, and offering our advice and expertise.
The final recommendation is to have Government sponsors and wider reform across Government to help remove barriers and accelerate change. Wider reform could include increasing employer incentives to deliver inclusive workplaces and fixing the Access to Work scheme.
RNIB’s employment policy lead, Roisin Jacklin, said:
“We are pleased the review recognises both the importance and challenges of the Access to Work scheme but remain concerned about the delays and cuts which many blind and partially sighted people are experiencing. Access to Work is vital for creating truly accessible, inclusive workplaces. If any of this is to succeed, the scheme needs to do what it was designed to: support disabled people to work. We need much quicker decisions, fair and sustainable funding and co-produced reform.”
