How accessible are our historic venues?

Historic buildings are a wonderful venue for corporate hospitality - but there's nothing hospitable about inviting someone with a disability to a venue they can't comfortably reach. Just think what it must be like to ride a wheelchair over cobblestones.

So - can you still hold your company event in a stately home?

Last October, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) gave Britain a world-beater. At a stroke it wiped out the idea of "catering for the disabled" and demanded that all buildings, everywhere, must be accessible by everyone, whatever their condition - everyone from grandmother to baby, from unsighted to non-English speaking, must be able to get everywhere and use everything.

But the stately home event sector has done very little about it.

Four months after the DDA became law, the Meetings Industry Association has found that only 20 per cent of conference organisers understand their responsibilities. One third of organisers don't know they have any legal obligation to the disabled. The College of Estate Management has now confirmed that some conference facilities in historic sites are inadequate, and complains that too many of them are using the legislation loopholes which say, in effect, that if it is impossible to alter an old building, or that it can be proved to be hopelessly uneconomic, they need not do it.

A typically curious attitude comes in booking instructions for the Banqueting House, Whitehall - "there are access restrictions for mobility-impaired visitors and wheelchair users", they say. And then: "in exceptional circumstances and by prior arrangement, access to the Main Hall for disabled visitors can be arranged via the adjacent building."

Just the phrase "there are restrictions" goes completely against the spirit of the DDA - it couldn't possibly sound more unhelpful or unwelcoming. They clearly don't know the statistic that says 41 per cent of disabled people value a positive attitude from the service-provider above everything else. This is not the spirit the DDA wanted.

The Act says that 8.6 million in Britain qualify as disabled, through mobility, manual dexterity, physical co-ordination, continence, ability to lift, speech, hearing or eyesight, and memory or ability to concentrate, learn or understand. It is estimated that 1.4 million private-sector service premises, and another 104,000 public sector ones are covered by the Act.

But who in the stately-home conference business has actually done anything?

In Manchester, fairly recently, Loyd Grossman chaired an evening of debate about disabled access to events in historic buildings, and led people on a tour of local sites. (His relevance was not as a curry-sauce maker - it was because he used to be chairman of English heritage.)

There are some successes. The operations department at Blenheim Palace has drawn up a detailed list of hazards for the disabled - staff can tell you the exact distance from one part of the site to another, the degree of any inclines on the path, and the number of ramps, steps and lifts. Delightfully, the guide ends with the lovely recommendation - "the Maze is not recommended for wheelchair users"!

The Tower of London and Hampton Court have both managed to install lifts for the disabled without ruining their historic buildings.

The new conference centre in Southwark Cathedral is part of a £6million refurbishment, of which the Dean had to raise about half in donations, and which he did with strings attached. "We were acutely conscious that this ancient building was unfriendly to people with disability," he said. "Several potential donors made it plain that they would fund our efforts precisely because we wanted to increase disability access."

Some of the very the best work in a historic conference site is at the National Portrait Gallery. In one case, the gallery made an old stairway navigable for people with sight impairment simply by re-directing the lighting - precise downlighting now casts shadows which make the steps and handles easier to see. But there's more to it than that.

"We have to cope with both physical access and 'intellectual access', and with people who simply have no sense of orientation once inside big buildings," explains access officer Lucy Ribeiro &"The gallery actually has guides who consider sign-language to be their first, or 'native' language!"

This is the way that historic buildings should be thinking, if they want your business. So, when booking a stately house for your event, don't ask, "Is there wheelchair access?" Ask them to list what the staff at the building will do to assist all your disabled visitors, and see how helpful a reply you get.

And if stately homes cannot do it, console yourself with the fact that in modern buildings for your event, Britain still has a world first.

The conference centre at charity Deafblind UK in Peterborough is now open for hiring, and is the only totally-accessible building of its kind in Europe, actually having been designed from the very beginning with disabled users in mind.