York Access Control Barrier Review

The Public Sector Equality Duty (Equality Act 2010) requires councils to:

  • Eliminate unlawful discrimination
  • Advance equality of opportunity between people who shared a protected characteristic and those who don’t
  • Remove or minimise disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics

There are at least 800 access control barriers in York of various designs of which at least 600 are not compliant with current design guidance’s minimum standards and so deny access for many legitimate users. To help address this City of York Council commissioned Transport Initiatives to review the barriers and recommend a way forward.

A chicane with yellow highlighting

We:

  • Reviewed the barriers that had already been identified, mapped and measured
  • reviewed best practise in the rest of the UK and continental Europe
  • convened two stakeholder workshops; the first to establish a consensus on policy and the second to instigate a process for prioritising action.

A ‘Dremple’ (Dutch word). This is a road dip as opposed to a road hump which is used in pairs to slow traffic to bicycle speed

The basic policy recommendation was that there should be a presumption against using barriers except where there was either, a persistent safety issue, persistent four-wheel motor vehicle access or livestock control issues that cannot be mitigated by design or enforcement. Existing non-compliant barriers should be removed or replaced by an accessible design.

There was a strong consensus in support of this policy within the stakeholder groups.

Preferred design for an accessible cattle grid with a pedestrian gate to one side

We discussed detailed accessibility criteria with the stakeholders and through a process of co-design produced draft designs for accessible barriers that filtered out larger motor vehicles, controlled speeds (the lovely sounding Dutch word, ‘dremple’) and cattle grids to exclude livestock. Using turning circles for the LTN1/20 ‘Design Cycle’ (which includes all wheelchairs and adapted cycles) we showed how the cattle grids should be positioned in relation to the paths serving them.

The York Access Control Barrier Review will help the City of York Council to meet its Public Sector Equality Duty and will improve access for people with protected characteristics. But design inclusively for disabled people and you design for everyone.