The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requires providers of services to provide "reasonable access" to their services and facilities, the penalty for failure may not simply be lost goodwill and custom, poor media publicity and costly complaint administration, it may even result by virtue of Section 9 of the Code of Practice in severe financial penalties.
Accessibility begins in the car park.
In order to satisfy the requirements of the DDA, it is necessary to not only have supplied disabled parking bays which are suitable in dimension and adequate in number, but they must soon be actively "monitored" in order to stop the prevalent social malaise of able bodied driver abuse of these bays. Remember that if access is impeded by an able bodied drivers vehicle, it becomes an impediment to access as that bay is no longer available to the disabled driver.
These requirements apply equally to retailers, hospitals, banks, fast food stores, cinemas, offices, stations; in fact anywhere a disabled customer needs access.
Important Note:
The Disability Discrimination Act does not limit it's effect to disabled drivers with permits, as such when considering your off-street parking provisions, you should take account of the fact that disabled drivers and disabled customers without permits have the same rights to accessible parking provisions as those with permits. This point was effectively confirmed by the Disability Rights Commission in February 2002 when it stated in it's Code of Practice that you cannot adopt a narrower definition of disability than is prescribed in the legislation.
Abuse of disabled parking bays by able-bodied is at the very least immoral, yet those drivers, or passengers, who suffer from severe temporary disabilities, those who have for instance recently left hospital, have the same rights under the Act, because of their disabilities, to park in disabled parking bays. This only applies whilst their disability directly affects their ability to gain access to a company's, retailers or service providers services.
