Building owners and Employers have an obligation to provide access to buildings and workplaces.
Older buildings have limited accessible features or are simply not accessible to people with disabilities therefore carry a greater risk of a DDA claim.
Do you know the accessibility status of your building assets?
A Building Access Audit is the first step to finding out the accessibility status of your building.
An audit identifies priority items which assist you to make future budget allocations and upgrade decisions.
Our qualified Access Consultants can tailor auditing to your needs, CapEx program or tendering system.
Where budgetary constraints exist, we can also develop a Disability Action Plan supplemented by management strategies to manage areas that don’t fully meet current minimum requirements, further reducing liability and demonstrating a pro-active approach by the organisation.
Building Access Audits are not statutory requirement, however they demonstrate that a concerted effort is being made to identify and improve the building environment for people with disabilities.
The next step is to develop a Disability Action Plan to mitigate future risk.
Disability Action Plans
A Disability Action Plan (DAP) documents an agreed strategy and reasonable time frame for building upgrades into the future.
The plan is developed after a building audit has been completed and agreed strategies documented and provided to the Asset Owner. Disability Action Plans can be periodically reviewed and updated to remain relevant.
A Disability Action Plan is voluntary, however, will go some way to reducing potential liability to the Asset Owner should a claim arise in the future.
We advocate Disability Action Plans as an agreement to improve accessibility to the built environment