Disabled Britons are being forced to move to the opposite end of the country from their family and support networks due to a national shortage of accessible homes.

Among the cases uncovered by The Mail on Sunday is a 52-year-old paraplegic man who had to close down his business when he had no choice but to move to a bungalow more than 100 miles from his home in Essex.

And a 28-year-old woman with learning disabilities and a history of self-harm who needed round-the-clock care was moved from , where she lived with her family, to Hertfordshire. 

Now her residential care home has been threatened with closure and she faces being shunted to Scotland.The disruption has left her increasingly anxious and her carers fear she is a danger to herself.

Meanwhile, one profoundly disabled boy has been left traumatised after his parents were faced with a move from London to Birmingham – taking him away from his special needs primary school.

‘The school offered everything for this child – one-on-one personal care and education,’ says Jo Underwood, a solicitor at the charity Shelter who is involved with the case.

‘There wasn’t anything like that near the new house.Not to mention the trauma of being prised apart from the family who helped look after him.’

After lengthy legal proceedings, Shelter helped the family put a halt to the move.

About 1.9 million Britons with disabilities need their home to be accessible – fitted with ramps, handrails, wide door frames and downstairs shower rooms – so they can move around safely.Some 1.2 million of these are wheelchair users, according to NHS figures.

If a disabled person is in a property that is no longer safe to live in due to their needs, they are placed on a waiting list for an accessible council house or residential care facility.A small number may choose to hunt for their own property, to rent or buy. In all cases, the supply is scant.

Outside London, just 1.5 per cent of residential properties due to be built over the next decade will be suitable for a wheelchair user to live in, according to housing association Habinteg.

The Government does not hold data on the current proportion of houses that can be lived in by wheelchair users, but housing experts believe it to be roughly two per cent.

Ms Underwood says: ‘Disabled people are sitting on waiting lists for years, in houses where their wheelchair can’t fit through the door, or there’s no toilet or bathroom they can get into so they have to use their kitchen.’

She describes people struggling in Dickensian conditions, forced to get by in a single room because the rest of their house is inaccessible. 

She adds: ‘When something does come up, it might be hundreds of miles away, so they have no option but to move.It means children have to change schools and the family lose their support from local nurses and carers, as well as family.

‘In some cases, nearby family and friends are the carers – and without them, they are stranded.’

As for the private rental market, she adds: ‘The few that are suitable aren’t affordable for most disabled people.’

Last week the Government announced plans to beef up minimum accessibility standards for new housing developments.

Under the proposed legislation, they will be required to have step-free access to all ground-floor rooms, and bathrooms and staircases must have walls that are robust enough to withstand having handrails or stairlifts fitted. 

But according to analysis by Habinteg, more than half of homes due to be built over the next ten years will not meet these standards.

A regional breakdown seen by The Mail on Sunday highlights striking disparities.In some areas of the UK, such as the West Midlands, less than one per cent of new homes planned to be built between 2020 and 2030 will be suitable for a wheelchair user. In London, the figure is 7.5 per cent.

A third of new housing stock in the South East will be adaptable for wheelchair users, with space for bathrooms to be fitted downstairs and wide floorspace, but in Yorkshire this is not the case for more than nine in ten homes.

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