- This topic has 13 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 4 weeks, 1 day ago by
.
- Topic
Suffolk County Council’s contractor, Believ, is installing public on-street EV chargepoints, few (if any) of which are compliant with the British Standard for public chargepoint accessibility, which SCC was relying on to avoid negative impact for people with disabilities.
The council believes that its position is appropriate and defensible, but I’m confident that it isn’t. I think it needs one or more low-risk legal actions to make it rethink what it’s doing.
I’m not (yet) disabled in any way that this discriminates against me, but I’m interested in supporting anyone who is disadvantaged by this to make a claim against SCC for disability discrimination in county court. I’m willing to pay the £80 court fee (and any further fee if it goes to a hearing) and help with drafting the claim. The almost certain outcome is the award of £1,300 (plus the court fee) to the claimant. If unsuccessful, the claimant can’t be held liable for SCC’s legal costs. 🙂
- Replies
I guess it is usual: once some disabled person will be electrocuted or driven over by a passing car, the government will issue their deep apologies and start thinking about.
Sent from a mobile device.
Apologies for briefness and spelling mistakes.Motability Skoda Enyaq SportLine 85x April 2024 - September 2026 (won my case with Ombudsman)
Motability Mazda CX-60 PHEV July 2023 (early termination on mechanical grounds)
Motability VW Touran Family Pack May 2019Suffolk County Council’s contractor, Believ, is installing public on-street EV chargepoints, few (if any) of which are compliant with the British Standard for public chargepoint accessibility, which SCC was relying on to avoid negative impact for people with disabilities. The council believes that its position is appropriate and defensible, but I’m confident that it isn’t. I think it needs one or more low-risk legal actions to make it rethink what it’s doing. I’m not (yet) disabled in any way that this discriminates against me, but I’m interested in supporting anyone who is disadvantaged by this to make a claim against SCC for disability discrimination in county court. I’m willing to pay the £80 court fee and help with drafting the claim. The almost certain outcome is the award of £1,300 (plus the court fee) to the claimant. If unsuccessful, the claimant can’t be held liable for SCC’s legal costs.
Sorry but isn’t it rather unethical that, before the fact, one is touting to potentially burden the Council Tax payer in Suffolk with legal fees and costs out of their paid Council Tax?
Money that could be used to help provide other important services to help disabled people. Not to mention the paid time that officials would spend on this, potentially at the expense of other important civic matters.
If, after the fact, a disabled person suffers any genuine hurt, loss, discrimination etc because of an inaccessible charger then the local authority should face the weight of the law and rightly so. If no person actually does however, then no one should claim such or should be induced/imbibed to claim such.
To tout for such in advance, not only smacks of someone trying to prove a moot point or perhaps worse, has a vested interest (such as involvement with a rival company which was not awarded the contract) etc, it also leaves a very nasty taste.
The law is there to put things right, not pre-empt situations by inducement!
Any wheelchair user who is trying to plug their charging cable into one of the side-mounted socket-outlets on an 11kW Believ chargepoint, is likely to have difficulty doing so from parking bay level when the chargepoint is mounted on a kerb.
If this or any other access problem occurs, try to get someone to take a photo of you (face not necessary) and the access problem. Also, make a note of where you were and how far you had to go to access the footway to pay for charging.
Thank you for your interesting challenge, BigDave.
I wrote that I was “interested in supporting anyone who is disadvantaged by this”. Please note that I didn’t ask anyone to falsely claim anything.
I agree with you that “the law is there to put things right”, but the Equality Act requires all public sector bodies to actively avoid offering any new service that unjustifiably discriminates against people with disabilities.
It’s my contention that in the 21st century, new publicly-funded infrastructure shouldn’t be inaccessible. This isn’t a moot point, because I have spent many hours measuring, photographing and testing installations and am convinced that they are inherently non-compliant with the accessibility standard and I am trying to prevent thousands more on-street installations in Suffolk being equally inaccessible unless the council thinks again.
Which would be the greater waste of money? A few thousand spent on defending a small claims court case intended as a “wake-up call”, or many millions spent on infrastructure in Suffolk alone (although I think similar things are happening everywhere else) that is badly needed by everyone, but so inaccessible to people with impaired mobility from the outset that it may be impossible to fix retrospectively, without scrapping it and starting again.
I only made my offer of support here because I’m aware that Motability customers are, as a group, relatively early adopters of EVs for reasons that I’m sure you know. 🙂
Speaking as a very disabled Suffolk resident near B St E and rate payer I am disgusted by all this.
No wonder we disabled get a bad press and labelled as scrounges, the OP is basically telling disabled people how to skim a thousand odd quid off the council. The Daily Mail and the tories will have a field day with this and cause further grief for the disabled when it is spun in the paper. Get your free grand here to go with your free car!!!!!!!!!!!
Or are you one of those ambulance chasing, lawyers or something after a quick buck and just using disabled people . Or are you on the opposition group of the council with an old score to settle.
Or do you actually work for Daily Mail or tories and trying to whip up more crap for the disabled.You admit you are not disabled, even if you qualify it with yet. What is your ulterior motive. You obviously have one by trying to make the council and disabled look bad. That takes some doing.
I screen shot your post with link and send it to our Suffolk county councillor, not reform by the way, in the hope they will use it to show you tried to bribe disabled people for you own nefarious ends.
You are not helping the disabled. You are putting disabled people in bad press for your own ends.
I’m invoved in the installation of charging bays for both local authority and private clients.
For sites over 10 charging bays on or off street, PAS1899 recommends a minimum of one in five charging bays be accessible (Type A or B). PAS1899 also specifies the bays should be green, rather than the traditional white, though this is less important here.
Thats the basics, and in depth look can be searched online.
However, where, I think your argument falls down, is PAS1899 is currently voluntary and not a legal requirement!
Thank you, Kezo! Yes, you’re absolutely right that PAS 1899 doesn’t have any statutory force, but you may have missed my point that “SCC was relying on [the standard] to avoid negative impact for people with disabilities”.
Like any public authority, SCC has a legal duty not to discriminate against anyone with one or more protected characteristics, including disability. My evidence that Suffolk has, quite sensibly, taken it upon itself to implement PAS 1899 as the best available guidance to avoid such discrimination is page 25 of Suffolk Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Strategy, which states:
“Objective 1 – Develop a fully accessible and inclusive charging network for all car drivers, ensuring no one group or area is left behind
Guidance and best practice from the PAS 1899 Accessible Public Charging
Standard will continue to be incorporated into the design and placement of
electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Suffolk, enabling an inclusive
experience for people with accessibility needs where possible.”I even think that the let-out “where possible” is also sensible, as installations on narrow streets aren’t necessarily going to be conducive to 100% compliance with things like hatched access zones on the carriageway side.
Based on careful study of Checklist E1 in the standard, which lists bare minimum requirements for accessibility for public chargepoints, my point was that few, if any, of on-street chargepoints are going to be anything like compliant because, unlike the level access available in a car park, almost all the on-street installations will involve plugging into a chargepoint mounted at footway height from the carriageway, then interacting with the chargepoint’s display and payment terminal from the footway. This will give rise to the following non-compliance:
- The frequent absence of a dropped kerb (or raised carriageway) within 20m, as no new dropped kerbs seem to have been budgeted for.
- With the particular model of 11kW chargepoint currently being installed, the height of half of the sockets fails to be PAS-compliant even if the difference in level is only 25 to 125mm, and the height of all the sockets is non-compliant as soon as the footway is more than 150mm higher than the carriageway.
Failing to make public on-street charging more compliant than that will inevitably discriminate against current and future EV Motability customers who cannot charge from their domestic supplies, as they will not have charging local to where they live and so be forced to use more expensive rapid charging.
My first call would be FOI request, requesting 1) if PAS standard accesible chargers are to be located on street side,2) if not why and the technicalties preventing the use of accessible chargers on street, 3) where they will be located instead, along with your poit on dropped kerbs or raised platforms.
Local authorities are not legally required to follow PAS 1899 however, they are encouraged to do so to ensure the accessibility of public chargepoints but we all know procurements! Untill, PAS becomes law, they are breaking no laws and any court will base its findings on the law of the land, not what is morrally right outside of law.
The responsibility for PAS lies with the procurer of the charge points, which can be a number a parties, including the LA itself, charge point operators or any other party. This can be ascertained in an FOI request.
When PAS eventually becomes law, like charge points for HA private company lease holder and flats, these bodies will have to then comply and will be given “x” years to meet the new obligations, so in many ways its undersighted not to have done it in the first place, but one has to consider the costs of these schemes and its common to see these schemes left untill they have to. Howver Sussex might have current plans to install PAS compliant charge bays elsewhere, where it makes more sense, in which case they have met their obligations.
Thank you for your helpful suggestions, kezo.
The Equality Act is law that does already apply. It says that all service providers, in this case both the council and contractor, must not discriminate against people with protected characteristics. In the case of public EV charging infrastructure they are fortunate to have the PAS advisory standard to guide them.
Both the local authority and the contractor have chosen to adhere to PAS 1899 for this project to avoid disability discrimination and unlock the grant money from central government. Disabled people’s civil rights are being eroded as soon as PAS-compliant “where possible” becomes “almost nowhere”.
I agree it will help if PAS 1899 becomes law, although it currently only applies to publicly-available charging infrastructure. I think it would only be likely to apply to flats if there was a statutory duty on management companies to provide rather than just consider EV charging for residents.
Yes, it’s relatively easy for local authorities to provide some fully PAS-compliant charging bays dotted around, most easily as designated accessible parking bays within public car parks. However, the eventual aim is to have public chargepoints on every street for the convenience of residents who can’t charge at home. There are unlikely to be many in leafy suburbs where everyone has their own off-street parking.
If a cluster of on-street chargepoints is too inaccessible for a Motability customer who lives nearby to use, the customer would be deprived of the convenience that their neighbours have, as they would have to charge their EV far from where they live, and have a relatively long journey home (and back again later) without the benefit of their EV, or be marooned in it while it charged. Making a new service available to others but inaccessible to a disabled person is unlawful discrimination. Compliance with PAS 1899 is just a way of avoiding violating the law.
To avoid unlawful discrimination against EV drivers with impaired mobility, there needs to be far greater compliance with the relevant portions of the (as yet non-statutory) PAS 1899 Annex E.1 Checklist – Core standard for minimum requirements for accessibility for all public chargepoints. And it would help if one bay in each cluster of on-street chargepoints was laid out as a designated accessible parking bay.
On a general principle, very few disability right’s, including law’s were handed to the disabled on a plate, by the able-bodied rule/law maker’s.
If there is no feedback of complaint’s, then the people who make the rules/law’s, claim that the system must be working, or they would have have had negative feedback.
Advancements’ and changes to help the disabled were never created and made by the apathetical and placid, amongst us.
There has never been a Guidance or Law that cannot be amended or changed.
Thank you, Callmejohn.
Yes, for a start unlawful discrimination is a civil offence, where the individual (possibly assisted by a rights organisation) or an association has to make a claim (unfortunately, only for money in small claims court) under the Equality Act, although some people are quick to criticise that as somehow selfish or wasteful if a public authority is the wrongdoer.
Compare that with any other sort of wrongdoing against an individual, such as physical violence, which can amount to a criminal offence, be investigated by the police and prosecuted by the CPS, all at public expense.
In Suffolk does a disabled person with on street parking (no driveway) get a dropped kerb to access the footpath, thus enabling them to get into their property?
In area’s of on street parking, reidents are typically parked more or less bumper to bumper, with very little room for a dropped kerb, let alone one of accessible spec.
On street parking poses many further challenges to meet PAS standardards, not least because residential streets are often narrower making it near impossible for 6.6m(l) x 4m(w) to even be incorporated in on street area’s. Also in most scenarios, the EVSE itself maybe accessible, they are in most cases shared (often impractical otherwise) amongst a number of residents, not just for disabled use and the bay in many cases can be used by a non EV.
Its very difficult and you’ll end up find residents start to bicker, as they often have to park further away from their home than normal especially those without an EV or charge elsewhere, residents often forget who’s turn it is and some disabled, will think they have the given right to park there all the time, not least, 7kW charger used once or maybe twice a week, is impractible.
If you have one of these Believ chargers on your street, you can check the height from both the pavement height and road height to meet PAS:
The socket outlet height should be between 750mm and 900mm
The maximum height for the charge point visual interface 1300mm, with touch interface heights between 800mm and 1000mm.
I see Suffolk are looking to intergrate home owners charge points as a shared basis, either through cocharge or direct deals into their EV strategy. Some areas have better coperation in this area, than others and of course building regs generally require accessible hights.
I think Suffolk .gov have said all the right things in the link provided and their stategy runs through to 2035 and on to 2040, so in hindsight they are at the very beginning of their journey. Who knows what the land will look like in 2040.
I still say an FOI request is the best first course of action!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.