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Disability Equality Scotland: Cost of Living Research Report

  • Area of Work: Lived Experience, Policy and Research
  • Type: News Item
  • Published: 27th May 2025

Disability Equality Scotland's report highlights the true impact of the cost of living in their new report.

Disability Equality Scotland has published a new Cost of Living Research Report 2025 to capture the true picture of being disabled in Scotland.

This report reflects what it is like to live in Scotland, as a disabled person, in 2025 from the most important stakeholders – disabled people themselves. It collates their views and their contemporary lived experiences – as disabled people – on a daily basis.

Disabled people have been denied basic rights that everyone else takes for granted because the vital support(s) they need are missing and that policy incoherence deepens the poverty and inequality that disabled people face. But how bad is it really?

Austerity measures, the Covid pandemic, an energy crisis and the impact of cuts to services, benefits and budgets have all had a disproportionate effect on disabled people. These events have forced disabled people to make some incredibly difficult choices about how they spend their money, pay their bills and look to maintain their personal independence. For some this has meant having to choose between eating, heating and using their independent living equipment.

The report findings present an incredibly challenging situation currently facing disabled people, including:

  • 69% of respondents said they had used some, or all of their savings, to pay their mortgage or rent in the previous 18 months;
  • 51% of respondents said they had to choose between heating their home or using their independent living equipment (prior to the January 2024 energy price cap rise); 
  • 37% of people sought advice from Citizen’s Advice Scotland or the Money Advice Service in the previous 18 months;
  • 24% of respondents had used a food bank in the previous 18 months. 

Disability Equality Scotland produced this report to both educate and influence respective governments to take both urgent and bold action, so that disabled people in Scotland receive the essential support to which they are entitled and so desperately need

For disabled people in Scotland, it is not just a cost-of-living crisis they face, but a cost of personal independence crisis. No disabled person should have to choose between their personal independence or paying their bills.

Read the full report here.

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