Access Audits

We offer two types of access audit so that you can choose the best one for your organisation.

Walk and Talk (usually 1 - 2 days)
Using our own access checklist, we conduct walk and talks with you or a representative from your organisation, reviewing the access of premises and their management. These are usually short exercises (e.g. half day/day maximum) culminating in a brief summary report or notes taken by the client as the assessment is taking place.

Full Access Audit (usually 3-5 days)
An access audit can be a longer process of surveying premises and their management in terms of their accessibility to all people including disabled people. This may also include a pre-audit. It will involve initial site visits, meetings with relevant parties (e.g. access officers/managers or architects etc.) to gauge how much work will need to be done. A further visit will generate a more substantial report of the auditing exercise including images, recommendations and a narrative summary of what was audited. These can last from a few days to several weeks and are dependent on the scale of the premises and budgets.

Many thanks for your Access Audit Report. It's brilliant. It's really well laid out, easy to read and packed full of useful information and advice. It's an incredibly useful tool to enable us to move forward in making our buildings more accessible. We will endeavour to make easy changes quickly and to build bigger changes into fundraising and development plans. Thanks also for the marketing review. Another useful report. We really enjoyed meeting you and sharing our concerns.

Access Consultancy
We provide access consultancy to a wide range of organisations. This can involve reviewing policies, working practices, attitudes and communications. Examples include: employment and recruitment, exhibition layout and design, audience development etc. Use it as a stand alone exercise, or as part of a strategic move to becoming more diverse and inclusive. And if you are an Arts Council England funded organisation, we can support you in making your contribution to the Creative Case for diversity.

We can support you with:

Evaluating your implementation programme
Development of your access action plan
Deploying ‘mystery shoppers’

Mystery Shopping
This is a short exercise whereby our assessor uses your facilities as a member of the general public and reports back on what was accessible and easy and what needs to be improved. They will report on toilet facilities, parking, lifts, general layout and attitude.

Much of our work is done in partnership with Nick Goss Consultancy Ltd (NGL). All NGL auditors are National Register of Access Consultants (NRAC) qualified.

For overseas organisations please contact us via [email protected]

COVID-19 Update: All training and auditing has been designed to be delivered in a way that ensures social distancing requirements can be maintained. Virtual training can be delivered and supported by best practice in access and inclusion. Where face-to-face training can be delivered, it will be designed to create an environment in which participants feel safe and comfortable.

Access services FAQ