Joint Committee on the Draft Disability Discrimination Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 364 - 379)

WEDNESDAY 17 MARCH 2004

MS ANDRE«E DEANE, MR STEPHEN DOBLE AND MR KEVIN SMYTH

  Q364  Chairman: Thank you very much for coming in. I think you heard an announcement at the beginning that there will be a transcript which you can check. Also, the acoustics are not particularly good in this room, so if you could speak up it would be very helpful. As I said to the previous witnesses, you are being web-cast, so if you would be kind enough to introduce yourselves for the record.

  Ms Deane: Andre«e Deane, Fitness Industry Association.

  Mr Smyth: Kevin Smyth, General Secretary, Working Mens Club Institute Union.

  Mr Doble: Peter Doble, the Chairman of the Association of London Clubs.

  Q365  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask you the first question? Do you think it is right to bring private clubs fully within this legislation?

  Ms Deane: If I could start by saying that I actually feel rather a fraud being here, because the Fitness Industry Association has been invited to comment on this particular clause and, in fact, it only applies to a very few out of one thousand six hundred of our operator members. I have pointed that out to the clerk. I think the definition of "private" in the exercise and fitness sector is very different to the definition of "private" in clause 5. We classify private health clubs as clubs that offer facilities to the public—facilities and services—as long as they can pay for them. So in fact most of our members have always had to comply with the DDA since 1997. The very small percentage of our members that will have to comply with the advent of this new clause 5 will be those corporate fitness facilities that are offered by companies who are endeavouring to invest in the health and fitness of their employees; but they are only a very small percentage of our clubs and they are very willing to comply.

  Q366  Chairman: If you wish to comment on the other issues, of course, you are free to do so as we go through the questions. Mr Smyth, Mr Doble, would you like to comment?

  Mr Smyth: Traditionally, of course, clubs have been private in nature, and, indeed, they still are a very important aspect of our argument with Government over all sorts of other issues. They are very private in nature. Having said that, I think clubs have always welcomed disabled members. I cannot recall ever visiting a club where I have not seen a disabled member of one sort or another in the club, often with parents, where the parents find it is useful for them to go into the club, rather than public houses or otherwise, because they know they can be with their children, or with their parents, depending on the age of people, and I think it has evolved pretty well over the years. Certainly we did a survey recently and we were quite surprised at just how many clubs have made tremendous improvements in recent years. I think it is evolving quite well and I do not think there is any need for it to be statutory.

  Mr Doble: I largely concur with the gentleman on my left. Our organisation is small (53 members), quite obscure and unusual with, probably unusually for you around this table, no axe to grind at all. The London clubs have always welcomed disabled people into what they describe, members describe, as, of course, their second home, and I am sure most people would agree that there is absolutely no need for legislation in your own home.

  Q367  Lord Rix: Could I ask how welcoming you would be or are being for people with a learning disability?

  Mr Smyth: Me?

  Q368  Lord Rix: All three of you?

  Mr Smyth: There are a number of people with learning disabilities in ordinary working men's and social clubs. I see it on a regular basis. I do not perceive that there are any problems. Often the members have a fatherly attitude, if I can put it that way, to them. Again, I was in a club in Swindon only last week where a girl was profoundly disabled both mentally and physically; yet the way people came up to her and said, "Hello", and that light of recognition, I thought, "Yes, they are really doing a good job for the community here. They are giving this girl an outlet that perhaps she would not have in other areas."

  Lord Rix: Good.

  Q369  Chairman: Are there still working men's clubs which do not allow women members?

  Mr Smyth: That is where we do discriminate, I regret to say. Fifty-three per cent of clubs in our organisation do have women with full rights, but under the Sex Discrimination Act we are allowed to discriminate. It is a matter that caused a bit of a hoo-ha only last week so that I was immediately summoned to GMTV and had to appear on it two or three times to try, in my opinion, to justify the indefensible. Clubs do have the right to determine their own criteria, and, as I say, 53% do give women full rights, but it is those 47% that we have to keep working on. Again, it is evolving, but slower than I would like.

  Q370  Lord Addington: Do you have any idea about the possible financial costs and benefits to your members from the measures in the draft Bill?

  Mr Smyth: I think the costs vary in proportion to the size of the club. If you have an historic building, obviously that could well clock up the pounds. Larger clubs, I think, probably do have facilities now, because perhaps they have the funds available or are modern clubs. Some clubs are in a very built-up area. There are still a number of clubs in terraced streets virtually. They would, I think, find it rather difficult: because with ramps you have to be very careful as to which way you put them or else the local authority will say it is sticking out too much and can cause other problems. So costs would vary pro rata for clubs, but the survey we did recently shows that over 60% of clubs now do have wheelchair ramps and a number of disabled toilets. That pleased me no end. If you had asked me to put money on it, I would have gone for a figure much lower than that. So clubs, I think, are doing it as and when they have the money. Some clubs have money; they will do it; other clubs are just about holding their heads above water. Club life is not quite what it was 20 years ago.

  Q371  Lord Addington: Also about the benefits. Has any analysis been done by the membership that you would encourage?

  Mr Smyth: No, we have not done any analysis on it. We believe that because clubs already welcome applications from people with disabilities—it probably would not encourage a great deal more. I do not think there are people out there who think, "I would join if only something was done." I have never heard of that anyway in 25 years.

  Q372  Lord Addington: You would not though, would you?

  Mr Smyth: I do not know. People do write in and say, "This is a disgrace", about so and so, but I have not had a disgrace about disabled access or anything like that.

  Mr Doble: I would say that probably 80% of the Association of London Clubs live in a Grade I or Grade II listed building, and therefore there would, of course, be significant financial cost to implementing the Act as it may be wished to be. My plea to you today would be to be so kind as to remove the hoops and barriers which we would face, after you have legislated, before you introduce legislation. In this respect I draw your attention in particular to English Heritage. We have had a number of problems over the years where the clubs have wished to introduce measures to assist all different types of people and, for reasons which you will all be aware about, English Heritage do not permit it. The result of this is that the burden is left on the individual club, whereas I personally feel that that should not be the case, that it should rest with Parliament who should resolve this before legislation is made, if I may.

  Q373  Lord Addington: So you think there is a real problem, not just for you, but in the entire heritage design of buildings?

  Mr Doble: Absolutely. I know in fact of at least one London club where they have asked to put in a lift and have been refused permission to do it. They have asked to put in ramps from the front door on to the street and they are not allowed to do it.

  Q374  Lord Addington: Does English Heritage have any sort of guidance available about how to do the least damage—

  Mr Doble: I am sorry, I could not hear.

  Q375  Lord Addington: I am sorry. Any sort of guidance about what would be the best way of fulfilling these duties? Has English Heritage taken that on board?

  Mr Doble: I think that is a very complex question which I would not be qualified to answer. I have personally had experience in putting in other legislation to do with fire precaution works in clubs, where you come up with an answer from your architect and English Heritage say, "No, you have to do it this way", and, as far as I am aware, they have an absolute veto on what you may or may not do to a Grade I or Grade II listed building. Therefore, any legislation which you pass will, of course, affect us in that way, is the only point I make.

  Chairman: If you have some specific examples that would be helpful to us. Amongst your members if you have any examples of this and you could write to us, that would be extremely helpful.

  Lord Tebbit: I think I might be able to give you two examples privately.

  Q376  Lord Addington: Yes, I could do the same. Could I ask the fitness industry, have you any thoughts about this?

  Ms Deane: We have many examples. I think this issue of cost and the word "reasonable" is something that our members would like more clarification on, because I think the general perception of the fitness industry is that it is buoyant and it is made up large clubs like David Lloyd Leisure and Holmes Place, and others, whereas, in fact, about 50% of our members have turnovers of less than £300,000, and they are very small, medium enterprises, very small businesses that are local community oriented and would provide a very welcoming place for disabled people. The cost is an issue, particularly in older listed buildings: we have one example of a small club in Wallingford in the High Street where they are not allowed to change the door, which would allow wheelchair access, because it is a listed building with a high street frontage, they cannot enable access to the showers upstairs because the corridors are not wide enough, not just for wheelchairs but for anybody with impaired mobility, and the access audit analysed that the cost would be in the region of £500,000, and that is without the door being changed because that was not allowed. Clearly, with a turnover of less than £300,000, that cannot be deemed reasonable, but we feel that clearer guidelines are needed.

  Q377  Lord Addington: May I just take that a touch further, with permission, Chair. What about actual use of fitness equipment? For instance, people in wheelchairs, etc. There will be certain aspects of a gymnasium which would be helpful to many of them, etc. That sort of cost and that sort of training of staff?

  Ms Deane: Yes. There is an initiative called the Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI) that has been pioneered by the English Federation of Disability Sport. That has been given £5 million worth of lottery funding in order to develop qualifications and training. We have in the sector a register of exercise professionals that is Department of Health grant-aided and endorsed and has levels of qualifications that are demanded of fitness instructors, and a Level 3 equivalent NVQ is required to teach mentally and physically disabled people. It is expensive, it can cost about £1,000 per individual to train, plus the time away from work, but there is some funding available for our local authority centres, not private clubs, and the equipment suppliers have embraced this initiative very impressively and have designed equipment that is suitable for wheelchair access, and for all types of mental and physical disabilities and that only costs about 5% more than a standard gymnasium fit-out to actually equip a new gym. Therefore, the equipment provision does not seem to be the problem. It is access to the buildings and facilities that is much more difficult for our smaller members to accommodate in terms of finances.

  Q378  Tom Levitt: Could I come back to the point that Steven was making a few moments ago? All your clubs are already covered by the DDA insofar as the employment of your staff is concerned; and it is already well-established that in the definition of "reasonable adjustment" that damage or changes to the nature of listed buildings can be taken into account in deciding whether an adjustment is reasonable or not, and therefore an adjustment can be deemed to be not pursued, authorised to be not pursued, if it is going to make an unreasonable change to a listed building. Why do you appear to be suggesting a different criteria of reasonableness might be applied under this Act than under the DDA?

  Mr Doble: My Lord Chairman, I was not implying that at all. I was simply pointing out the practicalities, the difficulties, with which I happen to be aware people have been faced. I am at a slight disadvantage at this meeting this afternoon, I have to say, in that the questions only arrived on Monday and so I really have not had time to consult widely amongst the Association; but, as Lord Tebbit has said, I could certainly give, although I would prefer not to, examples of private London clubs which have faced these specific difficulties, and I am sure that everybody round the table would agree they exist.

  Q379  Lord Tebbit: Could I return to a matter which was a concern of Andre«e Deane? A lot of private health clubs, fitness clubs, are in fact normal commercial businesses, and so they are bound by a lot of the legislation already obviously; but where a club has, for example, a swimming pool, is it thought in the industry to be reasonable that in order to provide access to the pool for a severely disabled person they should purchase hoists, and that, if that person requires assistance in the water, that for no charge other than what would be made to an able bodied person to use the pool an attendant should be available to look after that person? Would you interpret the legislation in that way, or is that taking it too far?

  Ms Deane: It is only the larger clubs that tend to have swimming pools. Therefore, it is more reasonable, I think, to expect those clubs to conform to the DDA and to comply with regulations and therefore to provide those facilities if they are needed. I think what we are finding with some of the larger chains in the sector is that there is a degree of tokenism towards the DDA at the moment because they feel that they are never going to have to cater for that level of disability. It is only in this last year, since the FIA initiated a code of practice and have made operators aware that if they do not comply to any relevant legislation then their insurance will be invalid, that there has been more a serious attitude towards the legislation; but in my research of our one thousand six hundred operator members there was not one club that had ever been called upon to provide a hoist either for the swimming pool or for the gym, so that the issue has not arisen. I have not asked the question as to whether they would think it was reasonable to provide that, but I can certainly ask that question.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Lords home page Parliament home page House of Commons home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2004
Prepared 27 May 2004