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13. Adults (16+) with limited mobility, and with Blue Badges
13.1 The interviewer asks adults with a long-standing limiting illness, health problem, or disability if they would normally find it difficult to manage certain activities on their own, such as walking for at least 10 minutes or using a bus. (Other adults are not asked these questions, and are therefore counted as not having such difficulties in this analysis.)
13.2 Table 27 shows the results for five transport-related activities. In 2006, 10% of adults said that they had a long-standing limiting illness, health problem, or disability and that they had difficulty walking for at least 10 minutes. The percentages who said that they would normally have difficulty using the following on their own were: bus - 5%; train - 4%; car - 2%; and taxi - 2%. Overall, 11% of adults said that they had a long-standing limiting illness, health problem, or disability and that they had difficulty with one or more of the five transport-related activities: 6% would normally find it difficult to manage one of the five activities on their own; 3% would have difficulty with two or three; and 2% with four or five of these activities.
13.3 There were slight differences between the sexes, for example, 4% of men said that they found it difficult to manage on their own on a bus compared with 6% of women. Overall, 10% of men said they had a long-standing limiting illness, health problem, or disability and that they had difficulty with one or more of the activities compared with 13% of women. Not surprisingly, the reported ability to manage such activities varied markedly with age: only 1% of people aged between 16 and 29 said that they found it difficult to walk for at least 10 minutes, compared with 32% of those aged 80 and over. Similarly, 5% or fewer of those aged 59 and under had difficulty in using a bus compared with 24% of those aged 80+. Only 2% of people aged between 16 and 29 had difficulty managing one or more of the activities, compared with 18% of those aged 60-69, 24% of 70-79 year olds, and 38% of people aged 80 or over. Differences by area type were not great. However, there was variation by whether a car was available for private use in the household. 22% of people with no cars available found difficulty managing one or more activities compared to 8% with at least one car available to their household.
13.4 Table O shows there was very little difference between the overall figures for the years from 1999 to 2006. The apparent year-to-year changes are assumed just to be the result of sampling variability, because they are almost all smaller than the "95% confidence limits" for the figures, which are about +/- 0.4-0.6 %-points.
13.5 The interviewer also asks whether the adult has a Blue Badge, awarded under the scheme of parking concessions for disabled and blind people. The second part of Table 27 shows that, overall, 6% of adults had a Blue Badge. As would be expected, the percentage of the population who held a Blue Badge increased with age ( e.g. 1% of 30-39 year olds, 10% of 60-69 year olds and 20% of those aged 80 or over).
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