Building requirements for physically disabled people

Property market forces rarely dictate attention to the more complex and specialist needs of minority groups, like the disabled, unless such a consideration is specifically included in the brief. Overcoming that selfishness and to integrate disabled people into the built environment of our community, is a struggle which has been receiving increasing attention for the last two decades. On 14th December, 1987, an approved document giving guidance on the provision of facilities for disabled people wishing to use certain buildings accompanied an updated mandatory requirement, which became Part M of Schedule 1 of the Building Regulations. This means that all local authorities, many of whom had dragged their feet in the matter up to then, have some real, if arbitrary, standards which they are expected to enforce on many developers. That probably marks the end of the beginning of a process which started, very tentatively, with the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970.