Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to Part One of the National Disability Strategy, published July 2021, what recent steps his Department has taken to (a) encourage and support workplace disability networks, (b) achieve and maintain the highest level of Disability Confident accreditation, (c) ensure responsive and timely support to meet workplace adjustment needs and (d) develop and embed flexible working.

(a) The Department provides encouragement and support to workplace networks through a partnership agreement. The agreement recognises the role our networks play, and the valuable contributions they make to help improve the working conditions, policy and processes for our diverse workforce. Networks all have a senior champion, allocated time to conduct network business and membership of various committees and regular meetings with the Department’s Executive Team and Ministers

(b) The Department is an accredited Disability Confident Level 3 leader. The accreditation was reassessed and validated in April 2021

(c) The Department already has processes in place to ensure colleagues who require workplace adjustments are supported. This includes workplace adjustments passports, an Occupational Health service provision and a Workplace Adjustment service. There are service level agreements in place and we work closely with our providers to monitor performance and continuously improve. Since March 2020, we have been working with our service providers to ensure a continuity of service through various working from home restrictions and to ensure that colleagues requiring duplicate or additional equipment receive this to enable them to work comfortably in a home or office environment

(d) The Department’s Smarter Working model will allow colleagues to decide when and where their work is best done. We have already rolled out new technology to all of our offices to ensure that people can join inclusive meetings regardless of their location. We also have plans to roll out smarter working standards to the rest of the estate to ensure that our buildings support flexible working which will include ensuring that people have the right workspace to support their needs whether working from home or from one of our offices.