to say did you see this story about the council building a 10 storey ramp for disabled access to a house?

[livelablove]

This is a mad one, what were they thinking? picture

I saw it yesterday and my first thought was that there is no fucking way I'd buy a house in the same street as that monstrosity.

My second thought was that it's a Passive Aggressive Ramp.

My disabled friend's house is on a steep hill and she's got a lift. Surely that would have been so much better in this case and cheaper too I expect. What if this family has to move later on? Is the council then going to pay a fortune to take this out again?

Amazing that a gate at the bottom to keep 'youths' out is considered far too dangerous but skateboarding on it is apparently perfectly safe!

RevoltInParadise
I thought exactly the same - that's why I called it a punishment.

:) at PA ramp.

After spending the past 4 years dealing with someone that supposedly deals with designing access for people with disabilities, this design does not surprise me at all.

In my experience there is very little consultation with the user, very little common sense and building regs are only applied when it is of benefit to the designer.

But as I said that is only in my experience.

I read the article as saying that the family had accepted the house with stairs knowing they had a child in a wheelchair and saying they could manage the steps - they then changed their mind and this was the result. I can see both sides. I presume they considered a lift as it is such a standard response. I also assume that they asked if they would like to move. It doesn't say these weren't considered.

I bet the postman's pretty pissed off too!

who on earth would want to be passive aggressive to a child and her family.

this is actually heart breaking and almost funny it's so ridiculous.

sure the littie girl has a hard enough time in life as it is without fuckwits in the council causing her more isolation and distress.

stupid cunts.

MrsD that's silly too, my friend ended up paying for her own bathroom alterations because what SS would pay for was so stupid.

MrsDeVere ridiculous isn't it. common sense seems to bypass some people and worse than that some bloody humanity and empathy for people's needs.

Building regs are 1:12 so presumably thats how much ramp was need for the gradient, they have to rail
I don't know why they didn't install a step lift or an outdoor stairlift, it would've looked nicer and probably been much cheaper

You can get outdoor platform stair lifts which would have utilised the existing steps. Just wheel the wheelchair onto it, press the button and up you go. Ridiculous solution from the council.

We have a specially built wet room for a wheelchair user that the wheelchair user can't use, the shower area is too small for her to sit in without the bathroom flooding and in order for her to use the toilet she has to enter the shower area, which causes her wheelchair to wobble and the wheels to freely spin.

To get out of her specially built bedroom to the out side world she has to pull a wheelie to get over the threshold because the floor isn't at the right height, the wheelchair ramp is not level and there are trip hazards at the bottom landing because they couldn't be bothered to lay the slabs correctly.

This is all done by a company that the council has decided is competent at designing facilities for the disabled.

It would have been SO much cheaper. Step lifts start around £4k! Or if she can transfer then a stair lift and a little secure shed for a chair, or a trailer for the chair...oh there are so many cheaper and better solutions to that problem. You can get lifts up actual cliffs and chairs that wind round sea paths for less than that.

Council adaptations are amazingly, hilariously, legendarily terrible. We design our own now. (Some councils let you do this, and tender the work yourself.)

We had a pub that was almost 250 years old and had survived that time without any major disasters. There was a small entrance lobby with an outer door and an inner door which had been used quite happily by those of our customers who were wheelchair users all the time we had been there. Then for some reason during our regular fire safety check, we were told that the inner door would have to be put on the other way round as it was 'unsafe'. Result: Wheelchair users could no longer get in or out of the pub by themselves! So much safer obviously! Our protests fell on deaf ears because you have to tick the correct boxes and completely ignore common sense don't you.

Mrs De vere We have the disabled faclitlited grant because DD was 18 at the application stage we got the full amount, which I though bloody great, at last life will be easier, we can get alterations done.

The down side is, that I have to hand over £20k on top for this crap job. AND I have no one to complain to, no way of changing what they have done, I am close to going to the papers and my local MP.

I am tired of the battle, I thought that I was getting a service that would make life easier for all of us, \I thought that someone who is employed to design facilities for disablilites would know the basic reguirement of building regs, I thought that a good job would be done.

Anyone that is going down this route, check everything over and over and over again. we have had 5 drawings for one ramp, none of which match what has been installed, the bedroom and wetroom does not match spec and does not match any drawings. and no where has a wheelchair user been taken into account.

Yeah, our rule is to never ever use a specialist disability company/supplier/contractor. They are always, ime, overpriced and underskilled predators stuck in the 1980s. Avoid!

If I can't find a mainstream solution then I will commission a custom one. But never pay the disability markup!

amazon £59.95
disability store £138

(I could do this all day).

Sorry, crosspost, Binky. My sympathies -I have been there. It's a nightmare. Hugs!

We were 'offered' something like that for the DFG grant we applied for for DS1. In the end we had to turn it down as we own our house (with a massive mortgage) and the unsightly mass of concrete would have devalued the house more than we could afford. They couldn't offer is any compromise and walked away. So we still have 3 steps to get DS up into the house and they refused to out any grab rails up as it 'wasn't safe'...

'Put up' any grab rails ...

The builders who have built the ramp (only last week) left building slabs outside of the 'site', in an area that they had been told was regularly used and could not blocked off or have anything stored there. These slabs fell on my sons leg, leaving a 6" long bruise. My DH will be writing an email tomorrow, politely telling them that our tolerance levels are now non existent and to get the fucking job done properly. Included will be another snag sheet, pictures of the mess the builders have left, the dangerous ramp and the injury my son has sustained.

Been here since 2007. Still have no ramp. No grips for the shower, no grips for the bath or any of the lavatories, nothing for the stairs. So, at 55 I am washing and bathing a nine stone chap who is taller than me and a dd who is also taller than me. Whilst dh couldn't manage on his own, dd could with the right adaptations in place.
Tossers.