Accessible Buildings

What is an ‘accessible building’?

We have a legal duty to make sure our services and buildings can be accessed by disabled people. This means we must take all reasonable steps to change anything that might stop customers using our services.

Very detailed and complicated building regulations are used to test out if a building is accessible.

What is the council doing about this?

We have spent over £1.5 million in the last few years making sure that the buildings that the public use are easier to access.

We set up the DDA Project. A project group of council officers and people from local disability groups – SCIL (Southampton Centre for Independent Living) and SAFA (Southampton Action For Access).

Working together we have increased the number of council buildings that are fully accessible. About 60 per cent of our buildings meet the DDA regulations now. This means, out of all local councils, we have moved from the bottom 10 per cent to the top 25 per cent for making sure our buildings are accessible.

Where we still have barriers in a building, we are making changes or offering alternative arrangements to make sure customers can still use all our services.

We still have some work to do, but we have already carried out improvements to:

All our local housing offices
• The civic centre – especially the opening of Gateway which gives customers access to a single contact point in the main council building
• Almost all our youth centres
• All leisure facilities – including the Quays, Chamberlayne leisure centre and Oaklands pool
• The crematorium and the offices for registering births, deaths and marriages

We are also improving
• Our libraries and community centres
• All our family centres
• Some of our playgrounds
• Our museums

Where it has not been possible to make a building fully accessible, we have written an ‘Access Statement’, which tells you what work has been done to make a building easier to use. Please click on the links at the right hand side for more information.

Disclaimer - due to the nature of the documents with the technical language used, these documents may not not meet corporate accessibility guidelines.

For more information or to comment on this page please call us on 023 8083 3445 or email communities.equalities@southampton.gov.uk