Posted By Paul Hi All. I would appreciate your opinion on the following situation. Workplace car park has roughly 1000 places including 8 disabled bays (we have 4 disabled persons on site). It is recommended that there should be 1 bay for each disabled + 2%, which would be 28 disabled bays. I looked through the information for the couple of past years and we never had more than 2 more disabled persons in addition to those based on site, which means that 22 disabled bays are likely to be always vacant. What would be the best way to identify how many disabled bays we should have - go by the recommendations and provide all 28 or carry out provision risk assessment, any other alternatives? Many thanks for your assistance. Paul

Posted By Tabs Recommended by who? Common sense says look at the history, as you have and set a number to suit. If you made six such spaces and adjusted that in the future if you continuously had problems, you would be doing far more than most - and no-one would say that you were being unreasonable. In extreme cases, such as a pre-notified event involving more than six disabled drivers, you could always reserve spaces and provide temporary accommodation of the vehicles.

Posted By Derekh Paul Obviously (in a workplace scenario)where parking spaces were at a premium having 28 accessible bays that are never likely to be used would not be considered reasonable. Therefore provide one accessible bay for each employee who requires one - and however many additional you feel you need for visitors who may need accessible parking. As long as you monitor the situation to make sure you have sufficient to meet your needs you will be ok. you don't say what kind of workplace it is, so if for example it is somewhere where there is likely to be additional needs at specific times (if you hold training courses or meetings where additional requirements may arise) then you can always make other bays available (reserve an area)for disabled motorists to use on a temporary basis. The DDA for service providers - and visitors, even business visitors, could be classed as 'sections of the public' - asks for only what is reasonable. Under the DDA only if a person with a disability is disadvantaged is there an issue -not the fact that you have not followed the BS. The fact that the premises does not follow AD M (to the building regs)I would suggest is not your issue for reasons that I won't go into (too long). Only employee issues (access requirements)relating to disabled access are covered (absolute) under H & S law (Reg 25A of the Workplace Regs)