Good but with no accessible toilet
2.5
2.5
Date of visit: April 2016
I am a disabled person. I have experience of challenges around: accessing toilets and moving around.
I use or have experience of: disabled toilet
Overall Rating
Average
Easy access, but the weirdest toilet situation I've ever come across
Disabled Access In and Around
Average
There is a small step at the entrance, which most wheelchair users will have no trouble with. There is room to get around inside the café, but because the tables are quite close together it's not easy to find a table which is easy for a wheelchair user to manoeuvre into position at. There is a small raised area at the back which is reached via a small flight of stairs, not suitable for wheelchair users or anyone with mobility difficulties.
Parking & Transport
Good
Westminster Station is fully step-free (District, Circle and Jubilee Lines) and several buses pass by in Whitehall.
Accessible Toilets
0There is a spacious and well-configured accessible toilet in the basement, with grab-rails, a red emergency cord (tied up out of reach of course), and a wheelchair symbol on the door. All very good you might think. But this toilet is reached via a staircase! There is no lift. What strange mind decided that it would be a good idea to put a totally wheelchair-inaccessible wheelchair-accessible toilet downstairs? Shame on Café Concerto for this fiasco. Zero stars.
Staff
Poor
The staff were as if sedated: uninterested in customers, and certainly not interested when I raised the question of a missing lift.
Additional Information
The message at this café, to wheelchair users and people with mobility difficulties, seems to be: "Eat! Drink! Be merry! But hold your bladder!" I will emphatically NOT be going here again, and I emphatically DON'T recommend it for wheelchair users.
