the point I was making was that the Blue Badge Scheme itself has no legal status once you  are off-road.
In terms of the Equality Act and reasonable adjustments, people’s rights can only be enforced through individual civil action through the county courts: the legislation was written to fail disabled people under the pretext of protecting them.
Having said that, the Act has been used to advance equality where all parties are willing participants.
If you can convince commercial operators that you have the weight of the law behind you and they are ignorant enough to believe you then you can sometimes get results but mostly you will need them to be good citizens who want to do the right thing within their budgets to succeed. 
You can try using the argument of proportionality: this is where the level of reasonable adjustments are weighed against the company’s finances, so a corner shop would be reasonable refusing to do more than add a grab rail for the steps into the shop whereas a large chain could be expected to spend a proportionately greater amount and plan and carry out more profound changes, including ongoing management practices; but the bottom line is that the Act has no real teeth and the EHRC has backed away from any enforcement role. 
If you have been watching the high court appeals by ILF recipients against the UK government’s barbaric behaviour you will have seen that even where a high court finds in favour of disabled people the decision has no force or effect and the minister simply reasserted the previous decision on the basis that he had thought about it again and came to the same conclusion.
Sorry to be pessimistic but better forewarned.

Regards,

Vin

Vin West
Chair
Arfon Access Group
01286880761
07771536760
Glyn Dwr
Llandwrog Uchaf
Caernarfon
LL54 7RA
[log in to unmask]



> On 24 Oct 2014, at 12:18, Jon Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for all your replies folks, but I'm afraid I'm even more confused now...
> 
> First Vin says  'Blue Badge parking spaces have no legal status in private car parks'. 
> 
> Then Alan starts off by saying 'I think Vin is right unfortunately' 
> 
> But then he goes on to say  'the reasonable adjustments duty under the Equality Act means that where provision for disabled people to park is made, the spaces have to be accessible otherwise they would be found to be ineffective as an adjustment under the Act. "Accessible" not only means convenient, well signed and of sufficient size but that the spaces must be managed to ensure that they are not abused otherwise they could be deemed not fit for purpose.' 
> 
> But Alan's last point is exactly what I was hoping for because what's the point in providing accessible spaces if you can't use them because they're not patrolled properly and therefore filled by people not displaying blue badges?!
> 
> And even if Blue Badge parking spaces does have no legal status in private car parks, doesn't the Equality Act take precedence over the regulations that say that? 
> 
> By the way, we're definitely talking about commercial premises, not council owned or managed so I'm confident the public sector duty doesn't apply.
> 
> ----------End of Message----------
> Run by SURFACE for more information on research, teaching and consultancy:
> http://www.surface.salford.ac.uk
> Archives for the Accessibuilt discussion list are located at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/accessibuilt.html

----------End of Message----------
Run by SURFACE for more information on research, teaching and consultancy:
http://www.surface.salford.ac.uk
Archives for the Accessibuilt discussion list are located at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/accessibuilt.html