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Posted By Peter MacDonald
Question
I attend a health club and regularly take my kids swimming there. The club provides disabled and parent and child parking. Most visits take place in the evening when it's dark and invariably all the disabled and P&C spaces are taken up, mainly by two seater sports cars, cars with no child seats and cars without disabled stickers.
There is no pedestrian path from the other spaces or markings segregating pedestrians and vehicles.
Now before I dissolve into a rant, does the club have a responsibility to manage their parking arrangements so the most vunerable of their clients (older people, disabled and small children)can access the club safely.
Pete
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Posted By Merv Newman
Peter,
can't help with the "responsibility" side, but I once printed up some fake disabled stickers, blue with white wheelchair symbol which said :
This parking space is reserved for people who are
* Physically,
* Mentally or
* Morally
Handicapped. For our future reference please indicate how we should record your right to park here.
The security guards were authorised to stick them to the windscreens as appropriate.
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Posted By Robert K Lewis
As these spaces are not on the public highway the enforcement is not made via the police of traffic attendants - It is up to the owner of the spaces to enforce their policy on this matter. Some companies are better than others in this respect. Certainly also the P&C boxes have no legal status anyway. I know one store that clamps such "illicit users", as you have indicated, but this is an exception. If it is a Local Authority owned premise I would be inclined to talk to the appropriate council dept otherwise try the facilty manager.
This is not to say that I am in totally in favour of P&C spots in any case as I am finding that these are often closer to the door than the disabled spaces in some car parks.
Bob
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Posted By Sean Fraser A question close to my own heart, this one. There is comprehensive on the terms and application of the Act on: http://www.drc-gb.org/up...rights%20of%20Access.docIt contains a plethora of examples to help interpret the meaning through practical ilustrations. Interestingly, it misses out the very one that we all see, every day - the one you've asked about. Funny that. One wonders if the duty of care extends beyond actual provision of an allocated space to actually keeping it clear. Possibly not, as no one (to my knowledge) has actually challenged it in court. I know of a major supermarket chain who have an on-going awareness campaign on this subject, where they have a picture that has "lazy" and "rude" parking spaces either side of the disabled spot - illustrating the attitude of the inconsiderates who put their own convenience above others who would actually benefit far more from the parking spot. Quite a memorable image.
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Posted By Kelvin George
Hi
I believe it depends who is the legal owner of the car park - just because the car park is attached to the club does not mean they own it. Mother and baby car park spaces are I believe a curtesy provided by the car park owner, however disabled spaces I believe have a legal significance such that it is illegal to park there if you do not have the legal right to. This may be a local byelaw sort of deal but I'm sure that in Stafford that is the case. Certainly worth checking out because I agree with you that some people are extremely inconsiderate when it concerns parking spaces.
Cheers Kelvin
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Posted By John Webster
The parent and child spaces are there to help attract clients/customers with children (cynical? me?), and have no status under any legislation.
However, disabled spaces are a different matter. Explicit within the Disability Discrimination Act is the right of a disabled person to access publicly accessible services on equal terms, and the provider of the service must ensure that reasonable provision is made to allow them to do so.
If your health club is not providing goods or services to the public, ie if it has selective membership criteria, then the Act does not apply.
If anyone can join, then the Act does apply, and where only a limited number of designated parking spaces are suitable for access by people with particular disabilities, then the health club must take reasonable steps to ensure that others do not use them. This very example is dealt with in section 5.7 of the DDA Code of Practice (ISBN 0-11-271055-7, HMSO £12.95).
Of course, if all other spaces were full, then it would be OK for club to allow a non-disabled person to use the space (a full car park is equally full to all, so no discrimination).
There is a parallel scenario in 5.8, in which a hotel with a limited number of accessible rooms should allocate those rooms last, but would not be expected to leave them empty on the chance of a disabled person requiring a room.
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