Disability discrimination / SAR Council

[TigerRag]

Registered partially sighted in 2007. Got my HA flat in 2015 in the same council area.

Every year I'm getting letters that are impossible to read comfortably (I have a complex eye condition which as well as poor vision means my eyes shake which makes it very hard to read) and every year I have to inform the council that no, I still can't read the letters they send me.

I have an email from them claiming there's a note on my account to say that I need letters in large print. This clearly isn't being followed.

1. How do I do a SAR to see if this note is actually on my account?

1. Nothings changing at all despite being known to them as a visually impaired person. How can I force them to actually send me letters in a format I can read? I'm bored of having to ask for the same thing every year.

I would ask them to email you copies of all correspondence. I get both paper and emailed letters off them.

To make a subject access request of the council, a Google search for “[your council name] subject access request” should direct you to the form and guidance for finding out what information they hold on you. If they hold incorrect data on you you can then write, indicating what data is incorrect and asking for it to be corrected. They must tell you what they have done to put it right within one month of receiving your request.

It sounds as though the problem is that several different council departments are writing to you, and they won’t necessarily be communicating detail between each other. You’re telling “the council”, but that isn’t filtering through to the relevant teams. In an ideal world they would, but until the ideal world exists, you may need to contact each individual department you deal with through their dedicated email address and ask for your correspondence preferences to be updated.

Your HA is an entirely different entity: contact your housing officer at your housing association and ask for a copy of your file and clarification that they’re aware of your disability.