Letter to the Editor: Post office change breaches equality act

The remaining sorting office functions were relocated recently from Cherry Orchard Road to Factory Lane. 

In terms of operations, I accept there would be good reasons to have your business functions located on the same site, to surmise, for costs and convenience.

But the remaining use that was relocated was that of the public collection point for undelivered mail. 

The place was gutted only weeks later by some dynamic youth taking advantage of your decision. 

For the public, the site in Cherry Orchard Road had access within 50m to national and local rail links, bus and tram links borough wide, near convenience to access the London Overground network and a full taxi rank.

There were maybe a dozen seats in the waiting area.

Now for the public, there is a bus stop about 600m away near a dual carriageway, and no seats. 

Your business reasons are for you, but the vast restriction on public access is wholly against the modern tenor for accessibility. 

London has invested a great deal in making it possible for anyone, to get anywhere, at any time. 

When the Royal Mail was a state owned company s.1(1) of the Equality Act 2010 imposed a “duty to reduce the effects of its functions on inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage”. 

It would have been a clear breach of this provision to relocate from a site that had vast ease of public accessibility to one that raised a fitness and mobility threshold for access.

But without being a public body, the move to less accessible premises is still a breach of the Act.  

Without the conveniences I mention above, the new premises directly effects persons with any of three protected characteristics: age, disability, pregnancy (and maternity). 

I am aware that you offer a free re-delivery service and may consider that to be a reasonable adjustment. 

If a person cannot manage to attend the Factory Lane site, they do not have to, so you may consider the need to make reasonable adjustments does not apply. 

But removing a choice, is not a reasonable adjustment. 

It does not excuse your duty to make your premises accessible.

Where, for instance, are the chairs from the Cherry Orchard waiting area? 

As a disabled person with urgent need to collect what had been returned the next morning, I got a cab to Factory Lane. 

I was at first glad to see ramp and lift access, to then be made wholly despondent by the site of a bare room with people lined against the wall, queueing up to collect.

I was reduced to asking a counter clerk to borrow an office chair, that I fell off believing that it had wheels when it in truth had flat castors.

Please let me know how you intend to lessen the “substantial disadvantage” your relocation confers to those with protected characteristics, as the Act requires.

BRIAN PUTMAN

Croydon

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