Chancellor Reeves Unveils Autumn Budget: Key Impacts on Blind and Partially Sighted People

Date posted: 30th October 2024

London, 30 October 2024 – Chancellor Rachel Reeves today presented her first Autumn Budget for the new Government, outlining significant investments and reforms across various sectors. Here are the key highlights affecting blind and partially sighted individuals:

Work and Benefits

The Chancellor announced a substantial £2.7 billion investment for 2025-26 aimed at reducing health-related inactivity and supporting employment. This includes £800 million for disability employment support and £240 million to address inactivity through the Get Britain Working White Paper. While this is a positive step, it must be tailored to the specific needs of blind and partially sighted people, with improvements to the Access to Work scheme to avoid delays in providing necessary support and equipment.

The Government also plans to tackle “fraud and error” in the welfare system with a new package of measures and will introduce reforms to health and disability benefits in early 2025. We are very concerned about the Chancellor’s decision to stick with the previous government’s programme to tackle health and disability benefits. The Chancellor’s language on “fraud” in the context of ill health benefits is damaging, divisive and wrong.

Education

The Chancellor confirmed plans to increase core schools’ budgets and provide a £1 billion increase to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision funding. We believe this is an important step in delivering reform to England’s SEND provision to improve outcomes and deliver better support to blind and partially sighted children and young people.

Health

A 10-Year Health Plan for the NHS will be published in Spring 2025, with commitments to further investment in NHS services. We hope this will lead to real action to improve eye health services and be the catalyst for the introduction of a National Eye Health Strategy.

Built Environment

The Government announce a nearly 50% increase, compared to 2024‑25, in funding for local roads maintenance. This will go further than the Government’s commitment to fix an additional one million potholes across England each year, investing almost £1.6 billion to maintain and renew the nation’s roads, an increase of £500 million on 2024‑25. We welcome this announcement. The poor state of repair of many of our roads and pavements can lead to injuries for blind and partially sighted pedestrians and make our streets less safe for everyone.

Transport

Plans to improve rail services’ performance and reliability were outlined, focusing on fare, service, and workforce reforms to create a modern, financially sustainable railway. Ensuring these changes prioritise accessibility will be essential.

These commitments mark a significant step forward, but their success will depend on targeted implementation and ongoing engagement with us and the wider blind and partially sighted community.