Hospitality not ready as DDA compliance deadline approaches

Minister for Disabled People Maria Eagle this week warned the hospitality sector to brace itself for "noise, light and heat" in 2004, as companies realised the urgent need to comply with changes to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), due next October.

Speaking at the Springboard Employers' Conference on Disability in London, Eagle admitted: "It can be easy to get lost as to what is required of you [by the changes]". But she reassured delegates that the Government wasn't trying to drive companies into bankruptcy. Businesses simply have to make "reasonable adjustments" to their premises, working practices and services, in order to make them disability-friendly, she said.

Eagle said a strong business case existed for making businesses more accessible for disabled employees and guests, adding that there were currently 8.5 million disabled people in the UK, with a combined annual spending power of £50b.

Another speaker, Michael Caines, head chef and co-director at Gidleigh Park hotel in Chagford, Devon, who lost his right arm in a car crash, branded the hospitality sector as "ignorant and backward in the way it thinks" and challenged it to "start setting the pace" in embracing disabled employees and customers.

Earlier, Michael Freeney, director of consultancy Access Matters, urged the sector to share best practice in DDA compliance. Even if only a minority of the UK's hospitality businesses fail to comply, he said, "they'll all be tarred with the same brush".

Freeney warned of increasing numbers of disabled guests and workers, and urged companies not to "address this issue today and then leave it".

The law

Since 2 December 1996:

• It has been unlawful for service providers or employers to treat disabled people less favourably.
• A reasonable adjustment must be made.

Since 1 October 1999: Service providers have been required to take reasonable steps to:

• Change policies, procedures or practices in order to provide a service to a person who is disabled; or
• Provide auxiliary aids to enable service provision; or
• Provide services by other means.

From 1 October 2004: The law will apply to ALL employers, however small. Where a physical feature makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of services, a service provider will have to:

• Take reasonable steps to remove, alter or avoid that feature (considering those options in the order listed); or
• Where that is impossible, provide the service by a reasonable alternative method.

Note: duties under the act are anticipatory, and all services are included, whether paid for or not.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 6 - 12 November 2003