Accessible Venues Best Practice Guidance

At some point in our lives, all of us face barriers that prevent us from fulfilling our potential and, needless to say, these barriers are greater for some people than others. Under section 120 of the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales has a unique statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity in all aspects of Welsh life, regardless of a person’s age, disability, gender, language, race, religion and belief or sexual orientation.

Over the past 10 years the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 has enhanced the lives of disabled people throughout the UK. It has worked to end the discrimination faced by disabled people and to offer protection in the areas of employment, education, access to goods, facilities and services, and the management, buying or renting of property. The introduction of Part 3 of the DDA on 1 October 2004 imposed a legal requirement on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to the physical features of their premises to overcome physical barriers to access.

To build on this, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 is intended to give more comprehensive civil rights to disabled people in employment and wider society. It introduces a general duty on the public sector to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people and imposes a specific duty on certain public bodies, including the National Assembly for Wales, to produce a disability equality scheme by December 2006, setting out how it intends to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people. The Assembly Government recognises that for disabled people to participate in society, they require equal access to goods, services and premises. Recent changes to disability legislation, extending rights of access, has rightly increased disabled people’s expectations of the level of service that they should now expect to receive when attending meetings and large-scale events.

In November 2004, the Voluntary Sector Partnership Council recommended the establishment of a working group to look at increasing the number of accessible venues in Wales. In January 2005, I established the accessible venues programme for Wales working group. I am pleased to say that we were able to use the experience and expertise of representatives from the Disability Rights Commission, Disability Wales, the JMU Access Partnership and the Wales Council for the Blind, all of whom have given up their time to help take this forward.

The project that they worked on aims to promote good practice among organisations that organise public events. It is vital that the Welsh Assembly Government and its partners throughout the public sector in Wales take the lead and act as an exemplar to ensure that, wherever possible, we use accessible venues for all public meetings and events. This means that we want to use venues that are not only accessible, but which empower disabled people, giving them a sense of independence and fulfilment. For example, a building that is designed to allow able bodied and disabled people to use the same entrance is much more inviting and acceptable to a disabled person. The group members have adopted this type of thinking throughout the development of the guidance. As such, their work is intended to build on the DDA legislation and ultimately increase the number of accessible venues in Wales.

As part of this process, I am pleased to announce that we have developed good practice accessible venues guidance which will be going out for consultation today. The consultation will take place between 4 April and 13 June 2006. During this time, we will aim to capture the views of as many interested parties as possible from a wide cross-section of society, including disability-related voluntary sector organisations, National Assembly for Wales subject committees, other public bodies and private enterprise. Their feedback will be used to improve the guidance and to ensure that it is as effective as possible.

The guidance should be used as a tool by venue providers for assessing how best to meet the needs of disabled people and for providing a service that goes beyond the current legal minimum requirements set out in Part M of the building regulations. The guidance includes several key features, such as a minimum, good and best practice grading system to inform venue providers of the actions that they need to take in order to offer an exemplar service to disabled people. It also incorporates web-based links to more technical literature, particularly in respect of the Part M building regulations.

As the guidance says, in 2002, the Welsh Assembly Government adopted the social model of disability as the foundation for all its work on disability. The model sets the problems faced by disabled people in their social context. It suggests that it is not disabled people who are a problem because they are different, but that it is society’s failure to accommodate that difference which amounts to discrimination. This guidance will contribute towards the Assembly Government’s vision of creating a more inclusive society in Wales. I will formally launch the guidance in July of this year at two events in south and north Wales.