Accessibility and Disability Adaptations in Residential Buildings and the Contribution of Equality Law Seminar

This seminar will be given by Professor Sarah Nield, Professor of Property Law at the University of Southampton.

In England and Wales flats are bought with long leases which impose restrictions on flat owners making alterations to their own flat. The flat owners are granted rights of access and other user rights in relation to the ‘common parts’ but it is only the freeholder who has the ability to make physical adaptations to the common parts. Many modern buildings also contain facilities, such as gyms, for flat owners use which may also be open to wider sections of the public. 

This legal structure makes disability adaptations very difficult. 

This paper explains how property law often stands in the way of accessibility, particularly for the elderly and disabled, in each of these leasehold contexts; within the flat, within the common parts, and in relation to ‘recreational facilities’. It then considers the ways in which equality and human rights law interacts with the complexities of property law, exploring the potential it provides to prise open the clutches of property law so as to enable changes that can support independent living and choice. 

Whilst resort to human rights can provide a platform for change, it is clear that there remains the considerable complexity of achieving a ‘fair balance’ between the respective rights, both human and proprietary, of the disabled flat owner and other flat owners within the development.  

 

Please note that all seminars will be online. This semester, HEAL decided to celebrate the research carried out in Southampton Law School with a variety of topics at the interface between health, ethics and law. All welcome!

For more more details, please email: heal@soton.ac.uk