The Government should do more to ensure disabled people are able to access public buildings and new homes, MPs have said.

The Commons Women and Equalities Committee said many disabled people faced an "unacceptable diminution" in their quality of life due to the built environment around them.

Many workplaces were inaccessible, they had little choice over where to live and the public spaces they needed to move through were "prohibitively excluding", the committee said.

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers, service providers and public authorities have a duty to make "reasonable adjustments" to their premises to ensure disabled people are not placed at a substantial disadvantage when it comes to access.

However the committee said the Government had effectively left enforcement of the legislation to private individuals, who were already at a disadvantage, to bring litigation against those who failed to comply.

"The burden of ensuring that an accessible environment is achieved falls too heavily at present on individual disabled people, an approach that we consider to be neither morally nor practically sustainable," it said.

The committee said the Government should require developers to provide a "reasonable level of accessibility" for disabled people for all new homes.

Local authorities, it said, should not have to prove there are enough disabled people living in an area to warrant building accessible homes before they can impose a requirement on builders to do so.

"Sadly, the ability to 'visit' a home is the current mandatory minimum - and sometimes the standard is not effective at achieving even that," the committee said.

The report also highlighted the adverse impact of the development of urban "shared spaces" on disabled people.

It said the removal of kerbs, controlled crossings and other street furniture - intended to reduce the dominance of the car - had left many feeling their ability to move about freely had been "severely curtailed" by schemes which they considered to be unsafe.

"All too often, disabled people find their lives needlessly restricted by features of the built environment," the committee said.

"Many workplaces and service premises are inaccessible, there is very little choice of where to live, and the public spaces through which people need to move can be prohibitively excluding.

"Together, these factors constitute an unacceptable diminution of quality of life and equality."