Legal threat over disability plan

A Cornish council could be taken to court because it has not yet complied with some of the new disability discrimination laws.

The Disability Rights Commission said the Isles of Scilly Council had not written an equality scheme, which it was meant to have done by December.

Suzanne Pender from the council said it does have a draft policy and that it does provide good access for everyone. The council has 28 days to comply with the notice to prevent legal action.

Disability Equality Schemes ensure all public bodies outline how they promote disability equality and how they ensure their services are accessible to people with disabilities. The legislation came into effect on 4 December last year.

Marie Rye from the commission said of 1,700 public bodies, nine, including the Isles of Scilly Council, had not yet registered their scheme.

She said the commission had issued the council with a compliance notice because both the commission and the government office for disabilities had written to them requesting the report but had not yet received it.

"These schemes are really easy and we don't quite understand why they haven't done one," Ms Rye said.

The council said the first letter it received from the commission was on Tuesday. Ms Pender said the authority was very small and it had to prioritise services for a remote community. "We do provide very good access to all our services for all our residents. "Our approach is that what is important to us is not pieces of paper but service delivery and we've addressed this by having an overarching diversity policy which includes a whole range of access to services, so if we do need to have a separate policy for disabilities, we will comply with that," Ms Pender said.

After the council responds to the commission, it has three months to produce a scheme.