Here Stuart Reynolds, UK Marketing & Product Management Director at AKW, discusses the key pitfalls to delivering retirement and care and large refurbishment accessible bathrooms, and how to overcome them.
Whether it’s a mixed-ability housing project, a private-pay refurbishment, multi-generational home or retirement complex, accessibility can be one of the hardest areas to navigate when it comes to specification. Even though general accessibility bathrooms are the most specified and can be found in new-builds, social housing, public buildings, retirement and care properties and large refurbishment projects they can be challenging to get right.
Traditionally, the specification of an individual’s accessible bathroom is driven by the occupational therapist’s report, with every area of the design tailored to clinical measurements and medical consideration. However, because general accessibility bathrooms – as the name implies – are not being designed for a specific set of user needs, universal accessibility standards are applied.
In the main these universally accessible bathrooms are achieved by specifying according to the Approved Document M (Doc M), which lays out minimum standards for accessibility. Additional guidance for specifiers comes in the form of BS 8300, which has influenced the inclusive spaces of many buildings for the better for many years. Alongside Doc M and BS 8300, other sources of general accessibility bathroom specification include housing association design advice, local authority inclusivity standards and manufacturer’s specifications.
Accessible bathroom specification guidance
Although the Building Regulations Approved Document M (AD M) provides statutory guidance, as has been previously mentioned a better tool to consider using during the specification process of general accessibility bathrooms is BS 8300:2018. The reason for this is that it goes beyond minimum standard compliance. For example, when it comes to colour and tonal contrast Doc M talks about visual contrast between sanitary fittings, grab rails, doors, floors, and walls but doesn’t detail the level of contrast that would be deemed ‘sufficient’ how to measure it or how to select products to achieve it, unlike BS 8300.
Retirement and care specification
When it comes to specifying general accessibility bathrooms in the retirement and care sector, the challenges can increase. This is because Doc M works well in setting minimum legal standards, but architects need to ensure that CQC (Care Quality Commission) standards are met for bathrooms in care facilities.
In addition, the average length of stay in a care home is under 2 years and 7-8 years for retirement properties, therefore bathrooms need to be designed to accommodate a wide range of end user needs.
Last but not least, the composition of senior housing has seen an increase in mixed tenure and rental only options in housing schemes. This, combined with the fact that 29% of beds lack en-suite facilities and 70% don’t have a full wet room, creates a need for clever design.
Ensuring cost-effective, waste-free specification
Over the years, AKW’s technical team has worked with a wide range of specifiers to overcome the challenges of getting the best possible general access bathroom, cost-effectively. Over that time, three common specification pitfalls have been identified that not only impact budgets but don’t help the specifier meet their sustainability targets either.
The first pitfall, in large refurbishment and residential retirement and care applications, is the overuse by specifiers of manufacturers’ Doc M accessible bathroom kits. These kits were originally created to make specification more straightforward for public buildings, so are not designed for use in retirement and care situations. In fact, specifying a Doc M kit for in these instances can lead to waste because some of the products that arrive on site end up in the skip as they aren’t needed (such as toilet back rests, single sheet screw on mirrors Etc.). A more cost-effective and less wasteful solution is to pick individual components.
Another pitfall in retirement and care applications is wrong product specification. This is because most retirement living bathrooms are designed with the needs of a 65-year-old in mind. However, the actual purchasers are more likely to be 80, and their needs are significantly different. It is possible to bridge this customer purchasing gap however, with some knowledge about the products that are out there that either future-proof the space or look good but combine multiple uses.
Finally, the last pitfall seen by AKW’s technical team a lot is over reliance on the Building Regulation’s Doc M ‘one size for all’ approach to accessible bathroom guidance. With some additional knowledge from accessible living experts, specifications can be cost-effectively ‘tweaked’ to accommodate more ‘hidden’ needs, such as for those living with dementia or visible impairment.
Although accessible bathroom specification can be difficult to get right, thoughtful design and the use of the right products, significantly improves the quality of life for the end user. By tapping into the wider expertise that is out there from manufacturers such as AKW, the result can be functional, to budget and stylish too.