Overview

This was a really nice shopping centre. The shops were set across two floors which had separate entrances and exits. There was a wide variety of shops inside including food, clothing, jewellery and much more. There were two banks of toilets, one on the Lower Ground floor and the other on the Dining Terrace. There were places to charge your phone inside the shopping centre and a Shopmobility location in the car park. The website for this shopping centre had really good information about accessibility. It seemed accurate to what I experienced when I was there. I’ve detailed more about some of the information in the Access section below.

Transport & Parking

The car park has over 1000 spaces according to the shopping centre’s website. 43 of those are accessible parking spaces and 73 are parent and child parking spaces. The car park has a height restriction of 2.2m (7ft 2in) and parking charges apply. There are also some EV charging points in this car park. There are a few bus stops just outside one of the entrances to the shopping centre. These are located on St Stephens Street. The buses available at these stops are: 1, 1A, 5, 5B, 8, 10, 10A, 14, 14A, 15, 15A, 16, 16A, 17, 23, 24, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 33A, 36, 36A, 36B, 37, 37A, 37B, 38, 39, 40, 40A, 41, 41A, 42, 43, 43A, 44A, 45, 45A, 54, 55B, 57, 132, 146, X29, X40, X41, X44 and X55. The shopping centre is 350 metres away from Norwich Bus Station where a number of coaches stop. It’s also 1.4km away from the train station.

Access

There are a few different entrances to the shopping centre with two being the main entrances that are used. The entrance on St Stephens Street brings you into the lower ground part of the building. There are four sets of doors at this entrance, the two on the outer edges have automatic sensors and the two sets of double doors are push/pull doors. The entrance from Chantry Square brings you into the upper ground part of the building. It has the same door setup as the lower ground entrance. There was another entrance on each floor which were both a lot quieter and had buttons to activate the automatic doors. The flooring was all very smooth tiling although some parts did have a slight incline such as when you came in from the Chantry Square entrance. Overall, it was really easy to navigate through the shopping centre and all the shops had level access with no lips or bumps. There were two banks of lifts that went between the two floors, one bank also went to the car park and the other also went to the Dining Terrace. There were a number of mobile phone charging stations. These were banks that could be hired to charge your phone for a period of time. I didn’t see any power sockets or seating throughout the main parts of the centre. There was a fair amount of seating in the Dining Terrace. Like I mentioned before, there was really helpful accessibility information on the shopping centre’s website. It had information about assistance dogs, who are very welcome but they do advise that they wear a hi-vis vest or something to identify them as an assistance dog as pets aren’t allowed in the building. They had also implemented autism-friendly hours in August 2021. These operated on Mondays from 4-6pm and offered a less stimulating environment to shop in. They turn the music down, dim the lights and only essential or urgent announcements are broadcast.

Toilets

There were two banks of toilets and each one had four accessible toilets alongside the male and female toilets and a family changing room. The bank of toilets in the Dining Terrace also had a Changing Places Toilet in addition to the four accessible toilets. All the accessible toilets were opened with a RADAR key. Standard accessible toilet There were a lot of accessible toilets at the shopping centre. In addition to the Changing Places Toilet there were eight more accessible toilets, four on the lower ground floor and four on the Dining Terrace floor. The doors opened outwards and had a horizontal grab rail on the inside to help with closing the door once you were in there. There was a coat hook mounted on the door but it was high up so I couldn’t reach it. They are on the small side for accessible toilets. The one I went into had room for a left-side transfer with a grab rail that could be raised and lowered there too. There was also a vertical grab rail on the wall behind the toilet and a horizontal grab rail on the other side of the toilet. The flush was operated with a handle on the toilet cistern. The handle had a wide end to make it easy to operate, although it was positioned on the far side of the cistern so you did have to reach across the toilet to reach it. The sink was a small one with a single tap that was manually operated (no automatic sensors). You twisted the handle to make the water run. Above the sink was a soap dispenser which needed to be pushed and an automatic hand dryer was mounted to the right of that. On the wall opposite the sink was a large mirror. The emergency cord was hanging freely to the floor. This toilet was definitely manageable for me, I have a small manual wheelchair and can manage with a small transfer space as I can swivel on the spot. For anyone that would need more transfer space or the assistance of another person I would definitely recommend using the Changing Places Toilet located on the Dining Terrace floor. Changing Places Toilet Inside the toilet, the door had a horizontal grab rail to help with closing it from the inside. There were three coat hooks on the wall on your right as you entered, two were higher up and one was lower down. There was a height-adjustable bench that could be used. The bench had a cushioned finish to it with some padding on the main part of the bench and the sides. A paper dispenser was on the wall which had paper to place on the bench before being used. The ceiling hoist was fitted to be able to access all the important parts of the toilet. The toilet had grab rails on either side of it that could be raised and lowered as needed. There was room for both a left- and right-side transfer although there was a bit more room for a right-side transfer. The flush was operated with a handle on the cistern which had a wider end to make it easy to push. The sink was height-adjustable and quite wide. The taps were manually operated (no automatic sensors) and there were separate taps for hot and cold water. There was a really large mirror mounted above the sink which moved with the sink when the height was being adjusted. On the wall to the left of the sink was a soap dispenser and a hand dryer which were both automatic. There was also a really cool hand dryer on the right of the sink. It was mounted a bit lower and had a dragon design on it! It was clearly aimed at children but it made me very excited! There was another large mirror mounted on the wall by the door which gave a full-length view.

Staff

Photos