Oh for goodness sakes.  What authority does the chair supplier have here?  I can quite understand that they would refuse to accept liability if something went wrong with the modified furniture but other than that what business of theirs is it?

Originally Posted by: Kate

What authority does the chair supplier have here?

They have designed, manufactured and supplied with a specific user in mind in execution of their duties under The General Product Safety Regulation 2005 (where other legislation does not exist).

Unauthorised modifications not only invalidate any guarantee they jeapordise the manufacturers identified controls for product use and leave them exposed to regulator activity.

Having been made aware of the change they have been put in a situation to either accept the risk including liability for injury or death or make clear their product cannot be used in the suggested manner.

In reality the manufacturer should have been approached for a solution rather than being asked to validate well intentioned work by others.

It's very poor form on the college to not provide more inclusive access, frankly it's not good enough. The problem in FE is that they push away better practitioners by putting money at the top in the hands of the loudest whingers and the biggest butt kissers. Very few people in charge in FE have any clue about how to apply realistic solutions without loading more pressure on the ridiculously underpaid support teams or throwing money away on a solution sold to them by some know nothing passing trade with sparkly eyeballs! 

Have this College anything to say for themselves on inclusion - like anything real other than the PR crap they spin (like most organisations) about how inclusive they are when in reality they do not listen or know a thing other than how to impose their able bodied guilt. 

I actually was called obstructive and discriminatory by my current employer because rather than jump and go and install an evac chair straight away I asked an individual in a wheelchair if they wanted to use an evac chair - individual said no btw. 

Firesafety - to be honest I don't see this as an extra hurdle but rather one of the Occupational Therapist most probably making a mistake and failing to specify what was needed.

So it appears that the stool supplier has supplied what was specified but that alone was not suitable as your daughter wasn't tall enough to use the stool without a foot rest.

If competent, the OT should understand the anthropometrics and should have realised that your daughter would need a foot rest. Not suggesting they are NOT competent - they have probably simply made a mistake for whatever reason (including likely having excessive workload - if you were to do a root cause analysis of this, it would be likely to end up with HM Government).

It's quite probable that the stool supplier makes stools with adjustable seat heights AND adjustable foot rests, which would be likely to be much cheaper (thence easily meeting the requirement for "reasonable adaptation") than making something complete with footrest specifically designed, bespoke, for your daughter.