On Thursday, September 27, 2012 8:06:18 PM UTC+1, SteveW wrote:
from one side of the door and steps from the other. Instead they talked
to the council and ramped the entire width of the pavement from both
sides, with the result that during the winter you have a treacherous,
ice covered slope and no flat bit to get around it!

Council staff can't read BS8300:2001 (or slightly corrected, but imperfect 2009). You can download it online in a few places - a good idea for uk.d-i-y members as it gets things "right" first time re BR or any contractors they use.

If there was space to have ramp & steps together, separated by a handrail at least or ideally wall with handrails then they should. It is however making a right mess of the frontage, when a portable ramp for most situations is more suitable. It does require staff to put the ramp out, and the ramp should ideally latch onto suitable fastenings (not difficult) but it works fine.

Plenty of black cabs have almost horrible ramps (height, width, internal space), rather ineffective karibiner harness lashing which has no diagonal component. A case of a country of architects, flexible standards and imbecile jobsworths who can't read, think or do much else. Had to redesign one for a lawyers office as the proposed solution looked like switch backs up a mountain with high wall leading to a step just 7" high with 5.2m available on approach. The council miss-read Part M for non-dwellings on every single dimension and their proposed landings obstructed pedestrians at the switchbacks.

Ramps should really have inset raised profile rubber grips on one side near the hand rail. Only seen it done once, and that was in Germany - they block paved one area and the blocks were rubber with a very aggressive "boot cleaning" profile like the old railway station engineering blue's. Freezing rail will still ice up anything and a ramp is a softer impact zone than a bull-nose edged tile or step, although not much as an X-ray will confirm.

Typical result is £4700 cost for a shop for (to-date) 85p spend by a wheelchair person. The original ramp was confiscated by the council as it "required Loler certification" which was absolute rubbish, the replacement ramp is... an ice rink in winter. Fortunately he kept the steps which had raised rubber step tread and a very good handrail. He moved to France, who have kept their architecture without destroying everything in sight (Brussels may of course change that yet).