Focus on accessibility at Alexandra Palace

Alexandra Palace, a Grade 2 listed building, has built a reputation as one of London’s premier venues for exhibitions, conferences, hospitality events and private celebrations.  Set in 196 acres of parkland overlooking London just five miles from Piccadilly Circus, its wide choice of visitor attractions range from the popular Ice Rink and Phoenix traditional freehouse pub, to outdoor facilities such as the Boating Lake and 18-hole Pitch and Putt course.  Its panoramic views, architectural features and well-proportioned multi-purpose halls and function rooms make it a popular choice for both corporate and private events.

With such an extensive range of attractions on offer, the Palace makes every effort to ensure that visitors with disabilities can use its facilities easily, and as part of this commitment has called upon System Concepts to carry out an audit to assess its accessibility.

The Palace is also aware of its legal requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) which brought in measures to prevent discrimination against disabled people, with the latest duties (introduced in October 2004) requiring service providers to ensure that the physical features of their premises are not making their services impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to use.

System Concepts is one of the leading independent UK consultancies specialising in accessibility and has developed a comprehensive accessibility audit to help organisations identify barriers and hazards to access for people with disabilities which may need to be changed.  The audit also provides pragmatic, cost-effective recommendations for any problem areas identified such as altering a physical feature or providing the service by an alternative means.

Quick and low cost, System Concepts’ illustrated audit reports help ensure compliance with the DDA and safeguard against the lost business opportunities and potential adverse publicity created when disabled people are unable to access services.

System Concepts has been providing health and safety consultancy services to Alexandra Palace since 2000 and has built up an extensive knowledge of the organisation and buildings. 

The purpose of the accessibility audit for Alexandra Palace, which was carried out by two of System Concepts’ consultants, was to assess the accessibility and ease of use of the buildings for staff and visitors with disabilities and identify the level of compliance of the site with DDA legislation.

The historic and varied nature of the Palace’s buildings added an extra dimension to the audit, which was required to cover many aspects from car parks and the external and internal access to, and exit from different buildings (including several fire exit escape routes), to reception desk and ticket office design, security control rooms, conference facilities/halls, theatres, the BBC Tower and leisure facilities (including the ice rink).

Taking into account the restrictions imposed by the venue’s listed and historical status, the audit proposes a range of recommendations for consideration to enable Alexandra Palace to continue making improvements in accessibility.  Commenting on the project, Sally Wearing, Director at System Concepts said, “Improving accessibility will make the Palace even more attractive to event organisers, especially those specifically catering for people with disabilities or for those where a sizable proportion of the target audience may have disabilities.”

For further information on System Concepts’ range of accessibility services please contact us.

Are you interested in helping us with usability and accessibility tests?  If so, and you have a disability, Leslie Fountain would be very interested to hear from you.  Contact her on  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or phone 020 7240 3388.