Judi Watkinson is a CAE Access Advisor, a member of the Chartered Society of Designers, and a consultant member of the National Register of Access Consultants. In 2024, she celebrated her 20th anniversary, specialising in accessibility in the built environment after originally training in access consultancy with CAE in 2004. Combined with inclusive design and access consultancy, Judi has over 30 years’ experience in commercial interior design and strategic space planning. In her blog below, she discusses Part M designer ‘bloopers’ and the many recurring issues she’s witnessed during access audits of buildings.
During my 20 years conducting Building Regulations Part M accessibility design reviews and access audits, I’ve witnessed an array of ‘bloopers’, most of which fortunately didn’t quite make it to construction. Some proposals would have been either very costly or impossible to remedy had they been implemented.
Design issues
One of the biggest design bloopers I have come across was the proposal for a new passenger lift in a large commercial building. The lift ran between two floors; ground and first with doors at 90 degrees between the two floors i.e. the doors were positioned on adjacent sides of the lift car due to the circulation corridors on both floors being at 90 degrees to each other.
Nothing wrong with that you may think. The issue was that the passenger lift was only designed to measure 1100mm wide x 1400 deep, the minimum required to comply with Approved Document M Volume 2.
So, when a wheelchair user entered on one floor, they couldn’t easily turn to exit through the door on the adjacent wall on the next floor. They’d have to do a lot of reversing and manoeuvring—creating a stressful and unsafe experience. This is an accessibility failure, expensive to retrofit to correct this for client and architect.
The other joint no. 1 blooper was found during a post occupancy survey of a commercial office building with basement toilets.
Directly in front of the cubicle doors was a single step running the entire width of the cubicles which was covered in high visibility yellow and black hazard warning tape. The soil pipes hadn’t properly been considered when designing the basement toilets, hence the build up to create a raised platform for the toilet cubicles to sit on top of. Not only was the step dangerous, especially for anyone exiting the cubicle, and not everyone looks down or pays attention, but it also ruined the carefully considered aesthetic of the interior design.
I’m not sure how this was remedied but it was a potentially costly issue in more than one way for the landlord or business to deal with.
Catch issues early
As architectural designs progress through the RIBA stages, the level of detail and information increases. If accessibility issues can be caught early in the design process, the design can develop while keeping on track without causing issues later.
Some frequent issues that occur are:
- Water temperature from taps not controlled and limited to 43 degrees Celsius at the point of delivery or with no warning signage. This can cause burns for people especially for people with reduced sensitivity
- Locks to toilets not accessible to people with limited manual dexterity.
- Signage not tactile touch readable, with inaccessible fonts.
- Digital displays lacking audio to provide access for people with sight loss.
- Lack of a choice of chairs with armrests, which some people rely on for getting in and out of chairs.
- Kitchens with no wheelchair accessible sink or worktop area.
- Appropriate levels of visual contrast not carefully considered. Having good visual contrast between surfaces supports people with limited sight to navigate a space more safely.
Achieving Part M compliance
To date, I’ve never reviewed a design proposal which complies 100% with the design provisions of Approved Document M. However, we must not forget that the Approved Documents Volume 1 and Volume 2 provide design guidance and there can be alternative ways to achieve Part M compliance.
As well as accessibility design reviews, I’ve witnessed many issues when conducting access audits of buildings, some of them recurring issues, including:
- A friend not able to pass through the newly installed principal entrance door of a charity building with her powered wheelchair. The UPVC door had been installed to domestic standards, and no-one had stopped to think that it would need to be wider.
- Final fire exit doors chained with padlocks for security purposes while people are working in the building. This obviously could be lethal should there be a fire and risk criminal prosecutions.
- Wheelchair accessible WC’s being rendered inaccessible if used as store rooms is common.
- Emergency alarm reset buttons in wheelchair accessible toilets installed by the door and too far away to be activated by a person or tied up out of reach or not installed at all.
- Visual beacons connected into the fire alarm system not installed in sanitary or quiet areas, an essential way to alert people who are Deaf/deaf in emergencies.
While some of these seem obvious, it’s amazing how, with so many pressures on architects, the simplest of issues can be overlooked.
The beauty of having a Part M architectural design review is that you have trained eyes studying your proposals. With the competence requirements under the new Building Safety Act, CAE highly recommends that Part M design reviews are undertaken at the earliest stages of a project by an access consultant and to aim for best practice standards. While complying with the Building Regulations Part M is a legal minimum requirement, CAE advocates designing to a higher level of accessibility in order to maximise inclusion for all.
Judi’s expertise includes supporting architects and designers through the RIBA design stages to help with planning permission and Building Regulations approval. For more information on design reviews or access audit, call CAE on 0207 822 8232 or email info@cae.org.uk.