Disability Confident Scheme: Three Levels, Limits, and Employer Reports

The Disability Confident scheme is a free, voluntary UK government programme that helps employers recruit, retain, and develop disabled workers through three progressive levels: Committed, Employer, and Leader. It’s run by the Department for Work and Pensions, sign-up happens on gov.uk, and each level lasts three years before you either move up or re-register.¹ Every organisation starts at Level 1 and works upwards; you can’t skip a stage.

Around 19,000 organisations are currently signed up, covering roughly 11 million employees, and participating employers appear on a searchable public register so job seekers can find them.¹

Level 1: Disability Confident Committed

Level 1 is the entry point. A representative signs up through the DWP section of gov.uk, agrees to five core commitments, and picks at least one activity from a list of nine. Once submitted, you get a confirmation email, a digital badge, and a certificate for job adverts, stationery, and your website.²

The five commitments are:

Run an inclusive recruitment process, with accessible adverts in plain language and only essential requirements listed.
Promote vacancies widely, including through disability job boards and Jobcentre Plus, and display the Disability Confident badge on adverts.
Offer an interview to any disabled applicant who declares a disability and meets the minimum job criteria. This is not a guaranteed interview for every disabled applicant; they still need to meet the essential requirements.
Anticipate and provide reasonable adjustments so disabled staff and applicants aren’t disadvantaged.
Support employees who acquire a disability or long-term health condition while working for you, so they can stay in the job.

The activity you pick alongside these commitments should be proportionate to the size of your organisation. Options include work experience, work trials, paid employment, apprenticeships, job shadowing, traineeships (England only), paid and supported internships, student placements, and the sector-based work academy programme (England and Scotland).²

Level 2: Disability Confident Employer

Level 2 moves from pledges to evidence. You complete a self-assessment on the gov.uk portal covering two themes, and you need to be able to show inclusive practices are actually running in your organisation, not just written down.

The first theme, getting the right people for your business, has seven core actions covering how you attract and hire disabled people: actively recruiting them, providing an accessible recruitment process, offering interviews to those who meet the minimum criteria, being flexible in how you assess candidates, proactively making reasonable adjustments, encouraging suppliers to become disability confident, and ensuring staff have disability equality awareness.³

The second theme, keeping and developing your people, has six core actions: promoting a disability-confident culture, supporting employees to manage their conditions, removing barriers to progression, equipping line managers to handle disability-related sickness or absence, listening to feedback from disabled staff, and reviewing the self-assessment at least once a year.

You also document at least one additional activity per theme with evidence to back it. Nobody external audits Level 2. It’s genuinely a self-assessment. But the government expects rigorous internal records, and you’ll need them if you later go for Level 3.³

Level 3: Disability Confident Leader

Level 3 introduces outside scrutiny for the first time. It has three parts: validation, leadership activities, and public reporting.

Validation means an independent reviewer confirms you’re actually delivering the core and additional activities from your Level 2 self-assessment. The validator has to have expertise in disability employment, or be an existing Disability Confident Leader. Smaller organisations might use a local disability organisation or diversity network; larger ones can draw on internal disabled employee networks or national disability organisations.⁴

Leadership activities mean showing you’re encouraging other employers to join. That could be sharing good practice on social media or at events, pushing suppliers in your chain to sign up (through networking, training, or procurement requirements), mentoring other employers, hosting or sponsoring Disability Confident events, or validating other employers’ self-assessments — a route particularly relevant for organisations with more than 50 employees.

Public reporting means using the government’s Voluntary Reporting Framework to record and publish data on disability, mental health, and wellbeing in your workplace. This is what separates a Leader from the lower levels: accountability that lives outside your own filing cabinet.⁴

What the Scheme Doesn’t Do

Two boundaries are worth knowing before you sign up, because they’re easy to get wrong.

First, the scheme sits alongside the Equality Act 2010, not on top of it. The Act makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone because of a disability across the entire employment lifecycle: application forms, interview arrangements, aptitude tests, job offers, pay, promotion, training, and dismissal. It also imposes a duty to make reasonable adjustments whenever a disabled person would otherwise face substantial disadvantage compared with colleagues. Joining Disability Confident does not discharge that duty. You still have to meet the legal standard case by case.⁵

Second, Disability Confident is not the same programme as Access to Work. Access to Work is a separate government grant that pays for practical support going beyond reasonable adjustments: specialist equipment, assistive software, support workers including BSL interpreters and job coaches, travel when public transport isn’t usable, and physical adaptations to the workplace. It doesn’t cover reasonable adjustments themselves, because those are the employer’s legal responsibility. The grant doesn’t affect the employee’s other benefits and doesn’t have to be repaid, though some costs may need to be paid up front and claimed back. Applications go in directly and aren’t tied to your Disability Confident level.⁶

What Employers Actually Report

A 2022 DWP survey of participating employers gives a mixed picture of what to expect. Two-thirds (67%) said joining had a positive impact on their organisation, and 22% said they wouldn’t have changed their disability employment practices at all without it. Around 36% said disabled employees were more likely to disclose information about their disability after joining, though nearly half reported no change on that front.⁷

The weaker area is support. Satisfaction with the scheme’s guidance dropped from 69% in 2018 to 55% in 2022, and satisfaction with direct support from Jobcentre Plus and DWP fell from 56% to 43% over the same period. The most common complaint, from 35% of dissatisfied employers, was simply not feeling supported through the process. The scheme gives you a framework, a badge, and a place on a public register. The actual work of building inclusive practices happens inside your organisation.⁷

1
GOV.UK. Disability Confident Employer Scheme
2
GOV.UK. Level 1: Disability Confident Committed
3
GOV.UK. Level 2: Disability Confident Employer
4
GOV.UK. Level 3: Disability Confident Leader
5
GOV.UK. Disability Rights – Employment
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GOV.UK. Access to Work: Get Support if You Have a Disability or Health Condition
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GOV.UK. Disability Confident Scheme: Findings From a Survey of Participating Employers