Ever since disabled man Geoff Meeghan was trapped in an Atos assessment centre a week or so ago when a fire alarm went off at the centre there’s been much discussion about the accessibility – or otherwise – of the buildings that Atos is using to hold work capability assessments for the employment and support allowance. ESA is a disability allowance, so it follows that a lot of people who must attend work capability assessments are wheelchair users and/or people who have mobility problems. You’d think that at the very least, buildings would be properly adapted to make entering and leaving those buildings as easy as possible for everyone.
Au contraire.
I took the video below in September when I accompanied DPAC campaigner Patrick Lynch and his carer Stephen to the assessment centre in Archway where Patrick’s WCA was to be held. I’ve uploaded it here to give you an idea of the rubbish which passes for accessibility in some of these centres.
As you’ll see in the video, the front doors at the centre wouldn’t open. A woman who was smoking a cigarette out the front came over to show us how to open the doors – she pulled them open with her bare hands. The “lift” was a single platform squeezed into the right-hand side of the groundfloor entrance. To call the lift, we had to hold the call button down and keep it held down. The door into the cupboard (which it was, literally) which housed this platform opened outwards, into the path of the wheelchair. Once inside, the platform only started moving when the call button was held down. It certainly took more than one person to operate everything.
I don’t know what would have happened if there had been a fire. Using this lift for escape purposes would have been challenging, all right, especially if you tried to fit more than one wheelchair in it. There may have been a brilliant, if not brilliantly obvious, escape route out back, of course, but if there was, nobody told us about it. Would we have had to find it ourselves?
Why would they make special provisions? Don’t you know all disabled people are faking it?!
Made a list of assessment centres and what floor assessments are carried out on.
East Midlands & East Anglia
Boston ground floor
Cambridge 1st floor
Chelmsford ground floor
Chesterfield 5th floor
Colchester ground floor
Derby ground floor
Ipswich ground floor
Kings Lynn ground floor
Leicester 1st floor
Lincoln 1st floor via ramp
Mansfield 4th floor
Northampton ground floor
Norwich 2nd floor
Nottingham ground floor
Peterborough ground floor
London
Balham ground floor
Croydon 1st floor
Ealing 3rd floor
Highgate 1st floor
Luton 6th floor
Marylebone ground & 1st floor
Neasden 2nd floor
Romford 2nd floor
Southend ground floor
Wimbledon ground floor
North East
Berwick ground floor
Bishop Auckland 2nd floor
Durham ground floor
Hartlepool ground floor
Newcastle ground floor
Sunderland 2nd floor
Thornaby 2nd floor
North West
Barrow ground floor
Birkenhead ground floor
Blackpool ground floor
Bolton ground floor
Bootle 1st floor
Burnley ground floor
Carlisle 1st floor
Chester ground floor
Crewe ground floor
Lancaster ground floor
Manchester ground floor
Mann Island lower ground floor
Preston 4th floor
St Helens ground floor
Stockport ground floor
Warrington ground floor
Wigan ground floor
Workington ground floor
Scotland
Aberdeen ground floor
Ayr ground floor
Banff ground floor
Benbecula ground floor
Campbeltown ground floor
Dumfries 1st floor
Dundee ground floor
Edingburgh ground floor
Fort William ground floor
Glasgow ground floor
Golspie ground floor
Greenock ground floor
Hawick ground floor
Inverness 2nd floor
Islay ground floor
Kirkcaldy ground floor
Kirkwall ground floor
Lerwick ground floor
Losiemouth ground floor
Montrose ground floor
Newton Stewart ground floor
Oban ground floor
Perth ground floor
Portree ground floor
Stirling ground floor
Stornoway ground floor
Stranraer ground floor
Thurso ground floor
Wick ground floor
South West
Barnstaple 1st floor
Bournemouth 1st floor
Bristol ground floor
Exeter ground floor
Glouster 1st floor
Launceston ground floor
Plymouth ground floor
Salisbury ground floor
Swindon ground floor
Taunton ground floor
Truro on two floors
Weston-Super-Mare 2nd floor
Weymouth 3rd floor
Yeovil ground floor
South & South East
Aylesbury ground floor
Brighton ground floor
Canterbury ground floor
Chatham ground floor & 1st floor
Guildford ground floor
Hastings ground floor
Milton Keynes ground floor
Newport ground floor
Oxford ground floor
Portsmouth 1st floor
Reading ground floor
Southampton ground floor
Wales
Aberystwyth ground floor
Bangor ground floor
Brecon ground floor
Bridgend ground floor
Cardiff ground floor
Cardigan ground floor
Carmarthen 2nd floor
Colwyn Bay ground floor
Dolgellau ground floor
Haverfordwest ground floor
Llandrindod Wells ground floor
Newport ground floor
Newtown 1st floor
Pontilanfraith ground floor
Pontypridd ground floor
Swansea 4th Floor
Tredegar ground floor
Tremadog ground floor
Wrexham ground floor
West Midlands
Birmingham 1st floor
Coventry 1st floor
Hereford ground floor
Shrewsbury ground floor
Stoke ground floor
Wolverhampton ground & 1st floor
Worcester ground floor
Yorkshire & Humberside
Barnsley 3rd floor
Bradford ground floor
Castleford ground floor
Doncaster ground floor
Grimsby ground floor
Halifax ground floor
Huddersfield ground floor
Hull ground floor
Keighley 2nd floor
Leeds ground floor
Pontefract ground floor
Scarborough ground floor
Sheffield ground floor
York ground floor
Not sure if ground floor means steps to building or ramps.
Hi, while I can see your concerns about gaining access (especially for someone without assistance) evacuation during a fire rules out the use of any lifts at all as the fire could burn through electrical wiring and trap a person to be burned alive. I believe any large company or organisation is required by law to have equipment as shown at http://www.evacusafe.net/public-safety/fire-evacuation-chairs.asp (which may or may not acommodate the wheelchair as well) and this equipment must be used in preference to a lift. You might have seen the bright yellow storage cases for this equipment by a stairwell as at http://www.liv.ac.uk/media/livacuk/safety/adminimages/safety/evac_chair_11.jpg
Platform lifts (as opposed to passenger lifts) always operate in the way you describe and for that reason do not provide independent access for wheelchair users and others without upper body/hand strength. They are much cheaper and easier to install than passenger lifts and are often installed in existing buildings where it may in fact be impossible, for structural reasons, to install a full passenger lift. They are by no means perfect and if they are used there should always be a member of staff on hand to help disabled people use them safely.
As Paul Duffy said, unless a lift is a designated evacuation lift (with its own independent power supply, very expensive indeed), they cannot be used for evacuation. Keeping people safe and evacuating them in the case of fire is the responsibility of building managers, who should have a proper evacuation plan for everyone, including any disabled people in the building.
There are two principal methods of keeping wheelchair users and others who can’t use stairs safe in the event of fire. The first is to provide (as required by building regulations) a fire rated refuge, usually in the stairwell. Depending on its construction, this may provide from 30 minutes to 4 hours’ protection. Staying in such a refuge, accompanied by a security officer or other member of staff who is in constant contact (by radio or mobile phone) with staff outside the refuge, is the first course of action. If it appears that this will not keep the wheelchair user/disabled person safe, due to the location or size of the fire, they should be evacuated. For this purpose there should be an agreed method of evacuation, usually an evacuation chair which staff are trained to use. Such evacuation chairs cannot be safely used without training and they can be very uncomfortable for disabled people to use; for those with specific physical support needs they can compromise health, hence the desirability of avoiding evacuation unless absolutely necessary. Such chairs are usually kept in or near stairwells for members of the public, or next to the desks of disabled members of staff.
When attending a meeting or appointment above ground floor level, details of the evacuation plan for disabled people should be available on request. It should include a protocol such as I’ve described above. It is important to note that the use of fire-rated refuges is an accepted method of keeping disabled people safe and may be sufficient depending on the size and location of the fire. However, constant communication and reassurance, and a member of staff remaining with the disabled person, is essential to avoid the natural fear and anxiety that would otherwise be experienced.
The reason I know all this is that before I retired in 2009 I was a local authority Access Officer :). What I do know, in addition, is that the amount and standard of official guidance available to help building managers is not good and, at least at the point when I retired, needs to be improved.
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The biggest problem i have found in the local assesment centers is no parking ,not even disabled parking on or near the center. As my partner has severe mobility problems due to traumatic brain injury she can not walk distances safely. This is flounting all health and safety rules. Also she can not climb stairs without great difficulty dur to her balance problems ,and the platform lift does not seem too safe. I shall be requesting a home visit as i do not wanr my partner put at risk, another fall could be potentialy fatal. Atos realy should address these problems ,by the very nature of their job they should safe access for disabled people .