Focus on Accessibility at Alexandra Palace

System Concepts provides on-going health and safety support to Alexandra Palace, including help improving accessibility to people with disabilities.

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.

The Palace makes every effort to ensure that visitors with disabilities can use its facilities easily, and as part of this commitment asked System Concepts to carry out an accessibility audit.

Why do an accessibility audit?

The Palace is also aware of its legal requirements under the Equality Act which brought in measures to prevent discrimination against disabled people, and requires 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.

What is involved?

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

The accessibility audit for Alexandra Palace, which was carried out by two of System Concepts’ consultants:

• assessed the accessibility and ease of use of the buildings for staff and visitors with disabilities
• identified the level of compliance of the site with Equality Act legislation
• made recommendations for ways to improvement accessibility.

The historic and varied nature of the Palace’s buildings added an extra dimension to the audit, which covered many aspects including:

• car parks
• the external and internal access to, and exit from different buildings
• several fire exit escape routes
• reception desk and ticket office design
• security control rooms
• conference facilities/halls
• theatres
• the BBC Tower
• 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.