Bank loses wheelchair access appeal
The Royal Bank of Scotland has lost its appeal over a ruling that it failed to cater for the wheelchair access needs of a disabled teenager who was awarded £6,500 damages.
David Allen, 18, who has muscular dystrophy, took legal action after the bank failed to install wheelchair access at the Church Street branch in Sheffield, where he is studying creative writing at the city's Hallam University.
Judges dismissed the bank's appeal and ordered it to carry out the necessary access work, which has been estimated as costing £200,000.
They also ordered the bank to pay Mr Allen's legal costs and refused permission to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Lord Justice Wall said in the ruling that Mr Allen could not access the counter facilities at the bank and a duty "plainly thereby arose" under the Disability Discrimination Act. He said the bank could have taken steps to provide access for those suffering from disabilities.
"The bank did not take those steps, giving as its reason not the disproportionate cost of carrying out the work, but simply the fact that it would lose the use of an interview room."
Judge John Dowse ruled at Sheffield County Court in January that the bank had breached the disability act.
Richard Lissack QC, for RBS, argued at the Court of Appeal that the judge had got it wrong in relation to the part of the act concerning the duty of providers of services to make reasonable adjustments to help the disabled.
He told Lord Justice Dyson, Lord Justice Wall and Lord Justice Hughes that the bank was "acutely conscious" of the fact that he was not well treated and was "extremely sorry".
He told the judges that the case provided the first occasion in which an appeal court - and maybe any court - had considered the application of the act to the provision of services which did not require attendance and, in particular, reasonable adjustment in respect of such services.
