Mailbox saga

Last year, on  22nd September 2007, I went to the Mailbox  for one of the few Malaysian restaurants which  in the area - the Oriental in Birmingham Mailbox.  I was going to celebrate Naomi's moving to Birmingham to go to Law College and plainly it was  an excuse to go eat some Malaysian Chinese food. I invited Rachel (Singaporean) and Liam too. 

And as is my habit I checked  the Mailbox website to see if it is accessible - and was reassured to see that it said it was  fully compliant -

The Mailbox is fully compliant with DDA regulations, all public lifts are fully accessible with Braille and voice announcements. There is a designated disabled entrance at the front of the building into both Wharfside Street and the car park. There are disabled toilets on Level 3 Wharfside Street and on Level 1 of the car park. Please contact The Management Centre on Level 5 on 0121 632 1000 if you have any queries.


However it was not the case there were staircases down to the waterfront but the lift did not work. Apparently it was for building work which did not follow up with reasonable adjustment, I was furious of being deprived and i wrote them an e-mail and followed it with recorded delivery letter.

Dear ----,
I was very disappointed on Saturday when I came to the Mailbox especially from Coventry to have some Malaysian food at the Oriental restaurant to find that there was no access to the restaurant. I did my check on your website - and according to it, you are fully DDA compliant - http://www.mailboxlife.com/disabled-access/.

On getting home, I rang the restaurant concerned and they said that the lift that they did have previously was closed down due to work on the Cube. I do not think that that would exclude your statutory duty to provide disabled access to restaurants which are very much public spaces.

I would very much appreciate if you could tell me if you have made reasonable adjustment for the loss of the lift?





Anyway at long last, they seemed to have put in some kind of platform lift which needed naomi to call the lift down in order to get it up again.

It was a lovely day, I would have been miffed if I had not been able to get down to the canal front again.