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Riding for disabled people › what the records show · drawn as a map of connections

Riding for the disabled: what the records show from outside

A body sees its own members and the people who reach them. Public records see every charity in England at once. This page sets the two side by side for riding for the disabled: who else does this work, where the network is thin, how exposed the field is, and how the people it serves are written about.

1. Who else does this work

83 charities in England are in this field by name or by membership. 4,064 other charities, outside it, say in their own latest annual report that they serve the same people: 98.0% of all the charities that name them. By what the register records them as doing:

Register purposeCharities outside the field naming the people
Education/training2,396
Disability1,982
General charitable purposes1,419
Poverty relief1,161
Health1,122
Economic/community development, employment911
Arts, culture, heritage, science763
Amateur sport714
Recreation562
Other purposes442
Religious activities438
Environment371

A charity records up to three purposes, so the rows overlap.

Among them, charities that are themselves in another of the fields on this site: 241 disability services; 95 young people; 58 learning disability; 53 legal help; 42 cadets; 38 local infrastructure; 37 young people with send; 36 unpaid carers.

Of those outside the field, 33.8% show under three months’ reserves or three years of deficits, against 11.1% of the field itself.

2. Where the network is thin

46 of the 152 county and unitary areas of England record no presence of Riding for the Disabled Association’s network: no listed place, and no member charity recording the area. The median share of residents on low incomes in those areas is 26.2%, against 24.6% across England.

AreaShare of residents on low incomesThin in how many of 24 fields on this site
Tower Hamlets41.8%9
Hackney40.3%9
Newham39.7%12
Barking and Dagenham38.6%16
Manchester38.2%3
Blackburn with Darwen37.4%12
Brent36.9%11
Luton36.8%10
Haringey35.2%13
Rochdale35.1%13
Leicester34.9%11
Nottingham33.8%9
Stoke-on-Trent33.3%12
Salford32.2%7
South Tyneside31.8%7

The 15 with the most residents on low incomes are shown, of 46.

Across every field on this site, the areas thin in most of them: Isles of Scilly (17 of 21), Barking and Dagenham (16 of 24), Portsmouth (16 of 24), Hartlepool (16 of 25), Rutland (16 of 25), Thurrock (16 of 25), City of London (15 of 24), Havering (15 of 24), Hillingdon (15 of 24), Lambeth (14 of 24).

What this can and cannot say. A thin area is one where the body’s own listed places and its charities’ recorded areas of operation are few for the people counted there. It does not mean nobody there gets help: section 1 is the measure of who else is at work.

3. Money and exposure

Fragile means under three months’ reserves on the latest return, or spending above income for three years running. Government-dependent means half or more of income from government grants and contracts.

GroupCharitiesFragileReserves (months, median)Income change over returns (median)Donations share (median)
The field8211.0%6.969.0%88.0%
All other charities in England68,02620.8%4.439.5%28.5%
The field, government-dependent1––––
The field, not dependent819.9%7.870.1%89.0%
The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods70.0%–37.5%–
The field, in the least deprived third3212.5%–74.4%–

1.2% of the field is government-dependent.

4. How the people are written about

Of the 4,114 charities whose latest report names disabled people, 15.8% write of them beside words of lack (vulnerable, struggling, crisis, hardship, isolated) and 26.8% beside words of what they bring (skills, work, leadership, confidence, potential, independence). Across every population on this site the sector’s figures are 23.4% and 25.5%. This field’s people are written about mostly by what they bring.

5. Riding for the Disabled Association’s members against the rest of the field

48 charities in the field are on Riding for the Disabled Association’s own list or record its membership; 35 are not.

MeasureMembersRest of the field
Fragile (share)12.8%8.6%
Government-dependent (share)0.0%2.9%
Reserves, months (median)6.7–
Income change over returns, % (median)77.664.2
Donations share, % (median)90.2–
Income, £ (median)87,75699,030
No income source over 60% (share)0.0%–
Report names the people (share)68.1%51.4%
Writes of what they bring (share)31.2%22.2%

A figure is shown only for a group of five or more; a median is of the charities with the figure on their return.

What this can and cannot say. These are counts over groups of charities and places in England, from their own returns and reports and from national statistics. They show where a field stands beside the rest of the sector; they do not rank any charity, name any, or say why.

Sources

Built from public information: the Charity Commission for England and Wales register of charities and the annual reports charities file with it (Open Government Licence v3.0); the 2021 Census (Office for National Statistics, OGL v3.0); the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (MHCLG, OGL v3.0); the Claimant Count (ONS). Figures are for England and are counts of groups of charities and of places; no charity is named.

Built 2026-10-03.


Questions or corrections
adrian@charityinabox.uk — Adrian Taylor. This page is a sample on a demonstration site. Nothing on it has been sent to any organisation named, and no organisation named here has agreed to appear.