Almost a half (48.3 per cent) of people who have never used the Internet are disabled, according to data published for the first time by ONS.
Over a third (35.9 per cent) of disabled people have never been online. This compares to only 11.9 per cent for people with no disability.
Across the country as a whole, just over 8.7 million people (17.5 per cent) have never used the internet. More women than men have never used the internet, with just over 5 million women never having been online, compared with only 3.6 million men.
Two thirds of those who have never used the Internet were aged 65 or over, while just under one per cent of those aged 16 to 24 had never been online.
Northern Ireland was the area with the highest proportion of people who have never been online at 28.6 per cent. It was followed by Merseyside (23.8 per cent), South Western Scotland (22.2 per cent) and Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (22.1 per cent).
The area with the lowest proportion of people who had never been online was Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire at 10.2 per cent. It was followed by Inner London (12.7 per cent), Surrey, East and West Sussex (12.7 per cent) and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (12.9 per cent).
Commenting, an ONS spokesperson said: ‘These figures show the big differences in the proportions of people accessing the Internet across the country. The proportion of people never having been online in Northern Ireland is more than double that in London or the South East.
‘These figures show that the elderly and disabled are among the least likely to use the internet.’
ONS has developed these new statistics to meet the needs of users, especially Raceonline2012, for more frequent information about people who have never used the Internet. Raceonline2012 aims to help as many new people as possible get online by 2012.
These new statistics, taken from the Labour Force Survey, will now be released quarterly.
Read the full report here
