Abstract/Summary

The built environment plays an important role in ensuring inclusive access, making a provision for the wider population, especially disabled people, in accessing goods, work, education, facilities, services, health and housing. There are currently 11 million registered disabled people in the UK and the number is expected to rise in the coming years. The majority of this population faces challenges within the built environment due to physical barriers, some of which can be eliminated during the design stages. The DDA 1995, now part of the Equality Act 2010, was brought in by the UK Government to eradicate these barriers and led to Planning Policy Statement 1 in 2005 (also known as PPS1, which replaced by the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012) and Building Regulation Part M 1987, 2000, 2004 and 2010. All of these are designed to minimise disability discrimination by calling for reasonable provision for inclusive access within the built environment. Yet the literature review for this thesis suggests that designs that are not inclusively designed are still being granted permission. Furthermore, the literature review highlights: the limited understanding of inclusive design policy implementation amongst policy actors; the lack of clear policy documents, and; the weak influence of policy in decision-making. This research aims to examine how policy actors gain an understanding of the inclusive design policy implementation process necessary to assess the accessibility of the designs. To understand the research aim an Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory was introduced. In addition, a qualitative methods approach is adopted. The qualitative component involved semi-structured face-to-face interviews with thirteen policy actors from four selected case studies which are Local Authorities, underpinned by an analysis of the inclusive design policy document for each case study. The findings highlighted three main issues: poor knowledge creation on inclusive design; lack of organizational vision of the inclusive environment, and; access officers’ poor involvement in knowledge creation. This thesis makes a number of recommendations for improving the current understanding of inclusive design policy implementation amongst policy actors.