Why Drive 40 Mins When There’s A Supermarket Closer to Home?

Laura Moore - 28 Nov 17

A friend recently told me she has to travel over 20 miles to do a weekly food shop and I was shocked.  She lives in a big town which has a Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose and M&S, all of which sell food.  I asked if she travelled so far to save money at a Lidl or Aldi or whether it was to buy locally produced foods at a farm shop.

She told me no, it’s a Sainsburys and it sells the same things her local one does.  But she uses it because it’s the only supermarket nearby which has a toilet her son can use.

Imagine driving for 40 minutes, into another county, to do your food shop because you can’t risk using your local one in case your child needs to use the toilet when you are there.

My friends son is severely disabled and the stark reality she faces is something which affects over 250,000 disabled people in the UK who wish to go to their local supermarket.  Currently there are only 9 supermarkets which offer a toilet for people with profound disabilities, and I don’t mean 9 brands, I mean 9 individual stores!

You may think this strange as you’ve probably noticed a disabled toilet in your local supermarket, you may have even used it.  But people with profound disabilities cannot use that simple facility because it doesn’t provide the 2 essential pieces of equipment they require.

The supermarket my friend travels to has a changing places style toilet which offers all the things you’d find in a standard disabled loo (toilet, grab bars, sink, emergency pull cord, space) and the two essential items she needs.  A large changing bed and a hoist.

Without those two items, any disabled toilet is pretty much unusable by anyone who requires assistance to use the toilet.

Without the changing bed my friend used to have to lay her son on the dirty toilet floor.  But he is now too big and heavy to lift so she doesn’t have that option available to her and requires a hoist to lift him.  That is why she has started travelling for 40 minutes if she needs to buy food while her son is with her.

This is a problem I also face in my local supermarket.  My son has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and is severely disabled, he loves the supermarket because he loves to watch people.  But our local supermarket, which is huge a Tesco Extra store, doesn’t have a toilet he can use, and we’ve often had to leave part way through doing our shopping simply because he needs the toilet and I refuse to lay him on the toilet floor.

The closest supermarket with a facility my son could use is over an hour away from where we live.

I’ve asked my local Tesco to update their facilities to include a facility my son can use but they refuse to do so, claiming there is a lack of space.  It is a huge Extra store which has a lot of empty space and plenty of opportunities to provide what we need.  This store is close to a big special needs college which is actually their charity of the year this year!  Children and young people from this school visit Tesco’s every week and are unable to use their toilet!

But it isn’t just me and my friend who have asked our local stores to adapt their facilities.  Families across the country have been asking supermarkets to provide changing places style toilets for over 12 years!  And despite having had 12 years to make these changes they are ignoring the issue.

These stores all provide toilets for their other customers and by refusing to provide a usable facility for people with profound disabilities they are neglecting their duties under the Equality Act 2010.  This is disability discrimination and something we need to change urgently so that families like mine can do their Christmas shopping without having to travel so far or leave half way through the store.

This week a petition was launched asking these retailers to commit to making these essential changes within their stores.  Within 48 hours it has gained over 30,000 signatures and been headline news on the radio.

On Wednesday BBC News will be exposing this even more by discussing how the lack of changing places style toilets impacts Christmas shopping.

If you have questions about changing places toilets, how they help, why they are so essential and how much they cost, you can read this.

Please take two minutes to sign and share this petition because disability could happen to anyone at any time and without changing places toilets people have to face a choice between sitting in their own mess or laying on a toilet floor in someone else’s. 

Laura Moore

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