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 | You and Yours - Transcript ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 24.07.03 - HOW ACCESSIBLE ARE BRITAIN'S PUBLIC BUILDINGS?
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PRESENTER: PETER WHITE WHITE Is too much of Britain out of bounds to disabled people and do new laws on removing physical barriers and dispelling negative attitudes due to come into force next October make people go the extra mile or impose unfair burdens on business and public bodies which they can't afford to take on? Well today we're concentrating specifically on public buildings and whether there's an inevitable conflict between preserving their character and providing for disabled people's needs. We'll be debating this in a moment with a group drawn from the disability rights movement, planners, business and the voice of a sceptical journalist. But first we join Nick Walker, one time restaurant reviewer, a wheelchair user, on two very different nights out. We find him first with two companions in the opulent heart of London's West End. WALKER Sketch - London' most exclusive and most expensive nightclub, come art gallery, come gourmet eatery. To be turned away from a door so hip it hurts. And turned away I was when in April I was invited to the restaurant for dinner, my power wheelchair was too heavy to be carried down the stairs. A favour here, a favour there and a reservation is secured for last Friday. Forewarned is forearmed and this time I arrive in a lighter chair. ACTUALITY WALKER This is a perfect summer's evening in the middle of London and we're in the heart of Mayfair and we're about to go to Sketch restaurant, the most talked about restaurant in London. Finally, up two steps and down 10 - inside the pleasure dome. A £10 million refurbishment, white leather lines the 18th Century walls, toilets are raised in ports from a circular staircase - pink for girls and blue for boys. An interior so fantastic it's to verge on the surreal. A menu of foie gras and the finest fish from a French Michelin three star chef. Dinner for three - just over £250.00. With four helping hands and gravity as my co-pilot getting in was the easy bit. With no choice but to go upstairs, getting out could be more cumbersome. I think we will need four people. We're going upstairs now. Hopefully people can lift it upstairs, well we're about to find out whether this will happen. Well we'll see. One, two, three, four, five. We've got two more steps to go. Let's go to the edge. Good. Well done. And the last step, slightly larger, excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you again, goodnight. WALKER I'd been carried out on to the streets of Mayfair like a Celtic chieftain raised on a shield, minions in my wake. MUSIC From foie gras to fish and chips. From Mayfair to Long Eaton in Derbyshire. From the most expensive real estate in London to a more real world. A small run of shops, somewhat closer to the ground and nothing but level access. ACTUALITY WALKER We're going into the shop side of the restaurant, it's completely level access, there's just the tiniest little step to go over. And we come up to the counter, I can actually see everything that we can choose from - I can see the fish and the pies and the sausages and such like. The counter's a little bit lower than your average fish and chip shop counter so I'm quite happy reaching on to that, I'll be quite happy taking fish and chips from here. SHOP ASSISTANT Can I take your order please sir? WALKER Can I just have fish and chips please? SHOP ASSISTANT That's 3.32 then please sir. There you are then sir, enjoy your meal. WALKER Thank you. WALKER A modest scrupulously clean interior and accessible toilet. Chairs and tables that can move to accommodate any turning circle. Haddock and chips for two with my host, Hugh Mantle, just under a tenner. MANTLE We did actually look at making it as easy for people to get in as possible. It's quite easy to adapt our properties for disabled access because they're essentially on one level, we have wide doors by nature. There's so many disabled, we also get a lot of people from local homes - older people - whilst I was waiting for you I took a booking for an old people's organisation. So it's acknowledged as being easy to actually get in and all our restaurants are like that. WHITE Nick Walker running the gamut of Britain's eating places. Well to go back to Sketch they told us that because they'd improved the building for disabled people by putting in an adapted toilet and a lift to its upper restaurant and because they were willing to carry diners in wheelchairs to the floor below they've been told by Westminster Council that they didn't have to install ramps or lifts to the area to comply with building regulations. English Heritage though tells us they're surprised that they were never approached to give advice on adapting this Grade II listed building and that they're absolutely sure and the man I talked to knows the building well, that it could have been made more accessible without affecting its essential character. They said they were disappointed that a £10 million refurbishment begun in 1999 seems to have made no attempt to comply with the spirit of the Disability Discrimination Act. Well we're discussing the issues that arise from this. First of all John Miller, as a surveyor and access consultant, are you surprised that a refurbishment like this was told it doesn't actually have to provide access down to one of its main eating areas? MILLER Well I am yes very surprised but the advice obviously Westminster Council gave was quite correct, it didn't need to have these improvements done to satisfy the current building regulations. WHITE So it's within the law and … MILLER Within the building regulations yes. WHITE .. and it doesn't also have to, really by law, satisfy the Disability Discrimination Act until the actual introduction date, does it, in October 2004? MILLER Well with all due respect again there's been something like an eight year lead in period advising people that by 2004 they should be considering at least to make reasonable adjustments and that would have been an opportune time to do it when you're spending that amount of money. WHITE But I press the point, because it's quite important, I mean companies don't have to, do they, there's nothing that actually forces them to do this? MILLER Not until 2004, they don't have to make reasonable adjustments to … WHITE Okay, let me bring in Marie Pye, director of the Disability Rights Commission. How much difference will 2004 make? I mean say Nick Walker - say Sketch had been refurbished after 2004 would that be against the law because it would still actually fit in with the building regulations wouldn't it? PYE The Disability Discrimination Act is based on reasonableness but I think any court in the land would think it was reasonable if you were spending £10 million on a refit to make sure that disabled people, older people, people with pushchairs, whatever, could use your business. WHITE What about this argument that they've done lots of other things - they've put in a lift to the upper floor, actually it wasn't working the night Nick went, but they've put it in, and they've put disabled loos in and they were willing strong chaps who would carry Nick up and down the stairs? PYE It's really good that they've done some stuff but isn't it a shame they haven't gone that little bit further, it's kind of spoiling the ship for a pen'uth of paint really. WHITE Well we're also joined by journalist and writer Rod Liddle and Rod you recently wrote an article in the Spectator where you suggested that business was being asked to spend money to satisfy a constituency whose numbers were being - I think you suggested - exaggerated or you didn't have to be as disabled as you used to have to be in the good old days, I mean has Nick Walker got no cause to complain if he's got to be carried down to a post restaurant like a child? LIDDLE No and I see an inconsistency in the disabled lobby group's argument which is two points to it. Firstly that there are eight million disabled people in this country which I'm not sure if I agree with but let's assume that there are. And secondly, I forget what the exact figure was for spending power - it was immense… WHITE There's a figure of 45 billion. LIDDLE Forty five billion, right, then let the market decide. WHITE What you're saying that if there are enough people to make it justified they will actually lose this money and then they won't? LIDDLE Of course. I mean I'm also - I mean I don't know I intend to visit Sketch at the earliest possible opportunity, I'm usually incapable of getting out of restaurants rather than getting into them, so I can actually see the access problems and I've had problems before. However, I think if someone is willing to carry people up and down stairs, let's assume they are willing and aren't just telling porkies, then I don't see why you need to spend extra money and thus push up the price of the food for everybody else. WHITE Just before I bring in our last guest for this half let me go back to Marie Pye, what about - what's wrong with that argument, you've used - the DRC - uses the business argument - it's got this 45 billion figure which I haven't got a clue how you arrived at, what's wrong with saying if there really are that many then Sketch will go out of business and Hugh's fish and chip shop in Derbyshire will do an absolutely roaring trade? PYE I'm sure Hugh's fish and chip shop will see some business benefits from making those changes and Sketch may see a little bit of business drop off but when you're the kind of company who can afford to pay out 10 million on a refurbishment maybe you're not too worried if one in six in the population don't want to use your restaurant - you've probably got advance bookings for the next three years anyway. What we're talking about here is the fact that we're in the 21st Century, this is actually about not discriminating against people, this is about not humiliating people. I'm afraid I think being carried up and down the stairs in a wheelchair, like you were a two-year-old in a pushchair, is really not something we want to see in this day and age. And I think when they're spending that kind of money then it's not too much to ask them to go a little bit further. WHITE I want to go - can I just go to Robin Pellew, who's chief executive of National Trust in Scotland, now you feel that you have good reason, at first hand, to question whether there is a conflict between your job of conservation and what you're being asked to do to comply with the DDA. PELLEW Yes that's true. We will have problems which arise when the requirements of the act, as interpreted by the local authority, conflict with the protection of heritage. What is regarded as going to be reasonable or unreasonable is going to be difficult to interpret but we would see that anything that actually damages the historic fabric of the building would be seen as unreasonable provision. WHITE So can you give me examples of the sort of thing that you feel you can't do that it would be unreasonable to do? PELLEW Well if you've got a doorway in a historic property which maybe has a step it would be perfectly reasonable to put in a ramp, it would not be reasonable though to destroy a 400 year old doorway by widening it for a wheelchair. Equally what do you do with a 14th Century keep castle which has 18 foot thick stone walls and a narrow spiral staircase that was designed specifically to deter an invading army? WHITE But Marie Pye wouldn't you say that that wouldn't be reasonable to expect you to adapt a medieval castle - I don't know, perhaps I'm wrong, but what do you think the courts would say? PYE I think the courts would say that making substantial changes that really alter the character of that building no way would it be reasonable. But let's just realise that not every disabled person's a wheelchair user and people like English Heritage have produced some fantastic guidance on how you can sympathetically improve access to historic buildings for everybody. WHITE Can I put that to Robin? That's one of the things that - I talked to English Heritage too and they said very rarely is there nothing that you can do and that it's down to actually having sensible talks but quite often, as in the case of Sketch apparently, they didn't go and talk to them, although that was a listed, a part 2 listed building? PELLEW I would agree there is a lot which can be done and indeed we have been implementing a programme to upgrade our facilities for disabled access for some years in anticipation of the act. So we're probably better positioned than many other historic property owners. WHITE But you're suggesting doing things like virtual reality aren't you? PELLEW Yes, well this was what I was going to come on, I think that the issue here is not to be able to provide disabled access to every nook and cranny of a property, it is also looking at alternative provision. And one of the things which we're exploring is the option of using the latest computer technologies to provide disabled visitors with a sort of virtual tour so they can see on the screen those parts of the building that we cannot actually provide physical access to. WHITE Okay, let me bring in Rod Liddle because you've been bursting to - I mean do you think Robin Pellew should not have to do these things? LIDDLE I think Robin seems to be striking exactly the right sort of balance and it's rather cheering to hear. I mean one hears all kinds of things on the grapevine, such as the plan to have sort of Day-Glo handrails round the outside of Stonehenge, which is quite near where I live down in Wiltshire … WHITE Yeah but aren't they the sort of classic Daily Mail stories that followed the GLC around and that sort of thing - type of Knocking Ken story every … LIDDLE Yes they are, yes they are but there are not all untrue either. And I'm not so sure it is about ending discrimination, it's about increasing discrimination. If you are adapting your building to cater for a certain type of person, that is discriminatory not anti-discriminatory. WHITE Okay well we'll come back to that because it may come out in this actually. As we heard on Tuesday's Call You and Yours one type of building which faces this dilemma particularly are the nation's churches, in a moment we're examining the problems of one particular church but first here's the perspective of someone in a position to see this from both sides - Elisabeth Davies-Johns is minister of the Methodist church in Wirksworth in Derbyshire, she's also a wheelchair user. DAVIES-JOHNS Picture the scene. I am a guest preacher in Nottinghamshire, I wheel to the front of the church, suddenly I find myself turned through 180 degrees to face the congregation, at the same time I'm being lifted to heaven, well on to a dais anyway. The four lifters seemed to be totally unused to wheelchair handling. There is surprise, the fear of being dropped, there are no holy thoughts at the start of the service, only I hope my underwear wasn't on display. I think of a friend of mine - Peter - who cannot bend his knees because of severe arthritis. At a civic service he attended he was offered a seat with extra leg room - wonderful - except that his view was blocked by a metre wide stone pillar. I remember once seeing a cartoon, it featured a wheelchair user forlornly sitting at the bottom of a flight of steps leading to the open door of a church, he stars at a large sign that ironically reads - This church welcomes all. Unfortunately this sums up all to well some disabled people's experience of the church. Many church goers with disabilities have a fund of stories about access difficulties. Some of these situations were humorous at the time or in hindsight but others were painful, disturbing or downright insulting. The major cause of such stories - an unfriendly physical environment - is meant to start disappearing soon. Will churches, synagogues, mosques and temples cease to be effective no go areas for disabled people? Will all of us be able to enter and participate as we wish in the life and worship of our faith with the same human dignity as everyone else? Will our hopes be fulfilled? I sincerely pray that, just as Jesus was inclusive towards everyone in society so one day our places of worship will also become inclusive. WHITE Elisabeth Davies-Johns with our own You and Yours version of Thought for the Day, not just to make former Today editor Rod Liddle feel at home. So how far … LIDDLE I never knew Jesus said anything about access ramps but I may be mistaken - it's some time since I read the Bible. WHITE Well perhaps it was just simply an anachronism. So how far is St. Martin's church in Epsom and its vicar Simon Talbot facing up to the dilemma of welcoming all its flock and adapting a building which incorporates many of the challenges we've been talking about - steps up to its main door and the fact that its church hall is in a five storey building which used to be a brewery? First a view of the church from wheelchair user Ruth Hodgson, who's been a parishioner for 27 years. HODGSON Well when you arrive and you get out of your car you've got a large flight of steps in front of you, a flat area, followed by another flight of steps before you start to get into church and then there are even more steps. DOUGLAS So this is the main entrance to St. Martin's? HODGSON It's the main entrance and I can't cope with it. DOUGLAS Okay so do you want to show me how you actually get into the church? HODGSON Yes I get in round the side door. DOUGLAS Okay, shall we go in that one door round there? HODGSON Now we're met by some very heavy fire doors and the difficulty here is in the winter they're obviously shut, so when I arrive they're closed. If I've got somebody with me to open them it's fine, otherwise it's quite a pull to open these heavy doors. DOUGLAS And there have been times when you've been stranded here haven't there? HODGSON When I've been to an evening service they're locked and I haven't been able to tell anybody I'm here - there's no bell to ring at the moment - and so I've had to go around to the front of the church and wait to catch somebody and say please can you open the door for me. DOUGLAS Okay, well let's go inside, I'll let you go through. HODGSON This is quite a tight squeeze. DOUGLAS I see what you mean, there's not much room on each side there is there. Are you alright there? Here we go. So here we are, we're inside. HODGSON Well the problem is that if I'm here for quite a while there's no toilet that I can use. DOUGLAS So what do you do? HODGSON I have to wait until I get home. And I live in Ewell which is some distance away and so it is a problem. ORGAN MUSIC DOUGLAS This year of access hasn't escaped the attention of the vicar and the church council. New toilets are on their way. A ramp or lift's being considered for the front steps with disabled parking bays at the bottom, the cost is estimated at around £100,000 and planning permission is unlikely to be straightforward. Reverend Talbot says both buildings are listed. TALBOT The examples that we have, from talking to other churches who have gone up a similar road, is that the planning stage can be quite lengthy and we may have to make some compromises and inevitably that will possibly increase the cost, so we're going into it with our eyes open. DOUGLAS The fact is not all churches are adopting the same attitude as St. Martin's. Paul Dicken is from Through the Roof, a charity working with churches and disabled people. DICKEN The sort of things that we've been meeting also have been things like churches that have said - Well we don't want to mark out parking spaces and reserve them for disabled people because quite a lot of the time they won't be in use. Others have said - Why do we have to do large print, surely people can wear decent glasses or they can bring a magnifying glass with them. All these are genuine things that have been told. Sometimes people get the wrong end of the stick altogether and say - We're thinking about closing our toilets down because we can't build a wheelchair accessible toilet and we don't want to discriminate against disabled people so we're going to close all our toilets down. So we've been able to explain to them there really is not need to do that. DEVIN This is powered mobile stair climber and it's a sort of high backed chair on wheels which we use for getting our parishioners into and out of the church hall. DOUGLAS Richard Devin is the church warden at St. Martin's. DEVIN You just clip them into the chair, back the chair up to the steps and when you press the up button … DOUGLAS However innovative it might be the people at St. Martin's hope they won't always have to rely on the stair climber while they're bracing themselves for the cost of improvements to their buildings both the church warden and the vicar agree it'll be worth every penny. DEVIN There are lot of people who might come to this church but don't because of the difficulties getting into it and if we're going to reach out and grow our church we have to accommodate all comers. TALBOT If churches take seriously the call to mission, to be reaching out into the wider community, these issues must be at the very heart of what they're about. If you're failing to address them then you are losing sight of God's care and concern for the whole of the community. WHITE That report from Epsom was by John Douglas. John Miller how would you sort out this problem of the churches, which they say is either there's a conflict between planning and doing the job properly or they have to spend an enormous amount of money? MILLER Well I think there's two questions to ask really and that is, going back to the one on listed buildings and many churches are listed, buildings are listed because they have survived through time generally and they've survived through time by being adapted to suit the needs of any particular time generation and access improvements, I would suggest, is only the 21st Century alterations to those buildings. There are many things that can be done, they need to be properly considered. Now with respect to churches you're talking generally speaking of organisations where they're cash strapped. So one has to look at it in terms of what is reasonable. But again go back to … WHITE But if you look at it - but if you look at it in terms of what's reasonable a lot of it won't be done will it? MILLER Some of it will not be done because it would unreasonable. WHITE Unreasonable to who - that's the question isn't it? MILLER Well it's got to be based on the demand, it's also got to be based on the cost of the works and its relationship to the way that particular business or organisation actually operates and how it can finance things. Over time this is not something that has suddenly got to happen immediately overnight, it's something about changing a societal view to where we see disabled people as being fully participant in society. WHITE I want to bring this back to the question of business because for business as a whole the issue is seen very much as a financial one. Stephen Cronin runs a small company offering financial services in Leicester and he got in touch with us to say he felt small businesses, like his, were being asked to do more than their fair share. Stephen, I mean what's the problem specifically from your business's point of view? CRONIN Hello, good afternoon Peter. Yes the main problem really is, as you say, money. I've been in touch with my architect who tells me my building is not 300 years old entirely but parts of it are, we're in the middle of a conservation area, if I want to put in access for wheelchair, the existing push button door - we run basically the largest local office of a bank in the UK, I have something like 6 or 7,000 customers a month coming through the door, each have to press a button to get in, if all that is altered the bottom line is £20,000. WHITE Now if you don't want to find £20,000 from your business … CRONIN Peter, Peter I don't have £20,000. I have two sons who I'm financing through medical school in your fair capital city down there and quite honestly I just do not have a spare £20,000 to just throw around. WHITE So do you have an answer because you also said I don't want to stop disabled people getting into buildings so what's your solution? CRONIN I don't know quite honestly, I don't know … MILLER Can I interrupt at this point? WHITE Yeah sure. MILLER Basically the Disability Discrimination Act is about access to goods and services. I don't believe anywhere within the act it actually refers to buildings. One of the options that the codes of practice give us in guiding us on how to satisfy the duties under the act talks about providing our services in alternative methods. So where it's unreasonable to get it actually within the building is there another way that that service - the same service that you offer - could be done in another way? LIDDLE How do disabled people get into your bank at the moment Stephen? CRONIN That's Rod is it? Sorry I'm sitting in a studio in Leicester I can only hear you through half a headphone at the moment. Yes at the moment - how do they get in, how do disabled people get in? - well at the moment I have two disabled customers and the way they get in at the moment is we go to the front door, we completely destroy our security - and I've had two armed hold ups in the last six years which have caused a great scare to my staff - one young lady has resigned, she's never come back to the place - and really the way we do it is, if it's raining we take an umbrella out and we … WHITE I'm sorry we're very strapped - I want to ask Rod Liddle very quickly, what about the idea that this is society's responsibility not just Stephen's and that that money should be taxpayer's money. LIDDLE Society - you mean we should pay for it. This is the essential paradox in what both you and Maria are implying which is that it's somehow undignified to accept ad hoc help from people on an every day basis but you're more than happy to accept their dosh. WHITE Well no I would have thought the suggestion is that that's equally it's not dependent on individual bits of altruism, it's equally spread out. Can I just get a quick comment, because we're very nearly there, from Marie Pye - why not altruism, won't people lose out by standing on their rights? PYE I think if you know you've got rights then you know it's going to be there. If you're relying on altruism then you're relying on people's goodwill, which isn't always there. Disabled people just want to know that they can go along to places like the bank, completely understand the issues people are talking about - money - which is why this piece of legislation is just based on reasonableness. WHITE I must stop there. Marie thank you, Rod Liddle, John Miller, Stephen Cronin thank you all very much and do keep sending us your e-mails and your calls on this subject. Back to the You and Yours homepage The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites |
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