Golf buggies and the Equality Act

What the Act asks of a venue

The Equality Act 2010 applies across Great Britain to anyone providing services to the public, which covers golf clubs, showgrounds, festivals, holiday parks, visitor attractions, stadiums and estates open to visitors. Members' clubs and associations have their own duties towards members, associates and guests. Northern Ireland is not covered by the 2010 Act but by separate disability discrimination legislation of similar effect.

The part that concerns transport across a site is the duty to make reasonable adjustments. Where a feature of how you operate puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared with someone who is not disabled, you are required to take reasonable steps to avoid it. On a large site, the feature is very often simply the distance between where people arrive and where they need to be.

Why it should be planned rather than reacted to

The point most often missed is that the duty is anticipatory. It does not begin when a disabled visitor turns up and asks for help. A service provider is expected to think in advance about what disabled people are likely to need and to have something in place.

In practice that is the difference between an event that has thought about how somebody who cannot walk half a mile will reach the marquee, and one that improvises on the day. The first is what the Act envisages. The second tends to produce the situation everyone wants to avoid, where a visitor is left waiting while somebody looks for a solution in front of them.

• Work out the longest distance a visitor may have to cover, and from where.
• Decide in advance how somebody who cannot cover it will be moved.
• Say so publicly, on the site's access information, so people can plan a visit.
• Brief the staff who will be asked, so the answer is ready rather than improvised.
• Record what you decided and why, including anything you concluded was not reasonable.

What reasonable does and does not mean

Reasonable is judged on the circumstances, and it takes account of practicality, cost, the resources available to the organisation and whether the step would actually work. A small operation is not held to the same standard as a large one. There is no fixed list of what must be provided.

What that does not mean is that the question can be waved away. "We have never done that" is not a reason, and neither is the fact that nobody has asked before, given the duty is anticipatory. Where an adjustment is straightforward and would plainly remove the disadvantage, it becomes difficult to explain why it was not made.

One rule is firm and often broken by accident: a disabled person must not be charged more for the adjustment itself. If a venue provides buggy transport as its means of making the site accessible, it cannot pass that cost to the disabled visitor as an extra fee. A charge that everyone pays for an optional service is a different matter.

How buggies come into it in practice

For events and large sites, the most common arrangement is a small number of passenger buggies running a shuttle, either on a route or on call, with at least one able to carry a wheelchair user without them having to transfer. Wheelchair-accessible buggies exist for exactly this, and they are worth specifying early because they are less common than standard passenger models.

For golf clubs, it usually takes the form of the buggy policy discussed in our guide on medical exemptions: allowing a buggy where others walk is a textbook reasonable adjustment when a golfer cannot walk the course.

It is also worth saying what a buggy does not fix. It does not help someone who cannot transfer into it, unless it is a wheelchair-accessible model. It does not help if the route it runs on is impassable. And it is no substitute for the accessible parking, surfaces and facilities the rest of the site needs. Transport across a site is one adjustment among several rather than the whole answer.

Where to get proper advice

This guide describes how the duty is generally understood, so that a venue planning transport knows what it is planning against. It is not legal advice, and the application of the Act to a particular site is a matter for someone qualified to advise on it.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes statutory codes of practice and guidance for service providers, and is the right starting point for the detail. Organisations planning a large public event will often find their local authority's safety advisory group expects to see how accessibility has been addressed.

Common questions

Does the Equality Act require a venue to provide a golf buggy

It does not require any specific measure. It requires reasonable steps to avoid putting a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage. Where the disadvantage is distance across a site, buggy transport is a common and often reasonable way of meeting it.

Can we charge disabled visitors for buggy transport

Not where the transport is how you are making the site accessible. The Act does not allow the cost of a reasonable adjustment to be passed to the disabled person. A charge everyone pays for an optional service is treated differently.

Does the duty apply before anyone asks

Yes. The duty towards disabled people generally is anticipatory, so service providers are expected to consider in advance what disabled people are likely to need rather than waiting for a request.