Dear Marks & Spencers,
You are one of the biggest retailers in the UK. You have a store in most of our towns high streets. Most people in the UK have shopped in marks and Spencer’s at some point in their life and most people I know visit at least once a month.
We all love Marks & Spencer’s for its great quality clothes, gorgeous underwear, comfy shoes. We treat ourselves to your food on payday and love to spend time with friends and family in your cafes.
We love how you change to meet the latest trends and have even recently added adapted clothing to your children’s ranges for those with special or medical needs.
That’s fantastic.
That’s what makes you the UK’s favourite retailer (and mine)
And that is why I am writing this letter to you.
Let me ask you this…
Why is it perfectly acceptable to you that your loyal customers have to lay their disabled loved ones on your toilet floors to meet their continence needs?
Why do some of your customers have to cut their visits to your shops short because they can’t use the toilets you provide?
Why aren’t you making your stores inclusive for EVERYONE?
We’ve been asking you for years to make changes to allow your disabled customers to be able to use ALL of your facilities but you’ve still not changed a thing.
As a mother of a severely disabled 7 year old I still have no choice but to lie my precious son on a dirty toilet floor when he needs to go to the toilet when we are in your store. I still have to struggle to lift him from his wheelchair onto the floor and then again from the floor to the toilet, at over 20kg this is not an easy job and is starting to cause big problems for my back health, it’s only going to get harder.
Lots of other parents / carers in my situation don’t have the luxury of being able to lift their loved one because they are simply too heavy. This means they have 2 choices, let them sit in a soiled pad or leave and return home to manage their continence needs in a safe and manageable environment.
A shocking 75% of disabled people have left a shop or business because of poor disability awareness or facilities, including toilet facilities.
We’ve been fobbed off with excuses and false promises for long enough now. It’s time for a change.
Marks and Spencer’s do you know that the UK has :
- 1.5 million wheelchair users
- One in 10 people who have either bladder or bowel incontinence (around 1.2 million people aged 65+affected by faecal incontinence)
- 1.5million people with a learning disability
- 1.2million people living with stroke
- 62,000 amputees
- 30,000 people with cerebral palsy
- 13,000 people with acquired brain injuries
- 8,500 people with multiple sclerosis
- 500 people with motor neurone disease
- 8,000 people with spina bifida
All of these people are potential M&S customers. And ALL would benefit from a Changing Places or Space To Change toilet facility in your stores.
The UK’s 11.9 million disabled people are said to have disposable income collectively worth £80bn!
By not providing these facilities what you’re really saying is that you don’t want us to shop with you. That our money isn’t good enough for you and that you will only provide facilities for those that it’s easy to cater for.
Times are changing, it’s 2016 and it’s time you changed too, you’ve already shown you can by adding adapted clothing to your range so let’s take it a step further.
In an ideal world, we would always prefer to have a Changing Places facility and where there is space there is no excuse to provide one, but at 12m sq not all your stores have enough space to accommodate one and we accept that.
At 7mt sq, Space To Change offers a great alternative to those stores with space constraints, in fact some of your current disabled toilets could easily be changed to a Space To Change facility simply by adding some equipment…no building work necessary.
Today I visited my local M&S store at Holmbush where you have 3 disabled toilets, 3 baby change rooms and one baby feeding room. This is wonderful, it shows you appreciate your customers and want to look after them. But one of those rooms could easily be adapted to become a Space to Change facility to allow your disabled customers to also be catered for and prevent my son and his friends from having to lie on the floor.
By providing better facilities you will be making your stores far more appealing to thousands of customers who like your products, enjoy your food and want to spend time with their loved ones in your cafes.
In the past we have been given reasons such as lack of space, insurance issues, other priorities within the business etc. We know there is always something more important within any business than thinking about toilets but unfortunately its an essential part of life so please don’t make excuses anymore, please do something good and provide what we need.
The time for change is now, what do you say Marks & Spencer’s? Are you in? Do you want to be the UK’s first and only fully accessible and disabled friendly retailer? Because that’s what we really want from you!
After all… its not just any toilet… its an M&S toilet!
Look forward to hearing a big fat YES from you M&S!
Laura Moore
Mum on a mission
One last thing I would like to add is this.. a quote from a passionate campaigner Sarah Brisdion of Hadleys Heroes
‘The next time a multi-million pound business/venue, local authority, NHS trust etc tells me it’s too difficult to install a facility to cater for disabled visitors or customers, I’d like to say (shout) this to them.
“It’s not difficult! Yes it takes a bit of investment (but not huge) and consideration. And yes sometimes that takes time and it may inconvenience you just a tiny bit for a short time. But it’s really not that difficult.
Difficult is having to sit in your own bodily waste or lay in somebody elses to have a nappy changed.
Difficult is having a disability or illness that prevents you from doing the things you love.
Difficult is having to manage your health or somebody elses, keeping them alive with medication and equipment when you are not even a doctor or nurse.
Difficult is living in a world where society doesn’t appreciate that you cannot help that you have a few extra needs, even though you would love to be able to change that.
Difficult is having to keep quiet about this stuff because you are too embarrassed to discuss your toileting needs in public with perfect strangers or never going out because you fear the state of the facilities you will be faced with.
Difficult is having a disability or illness that restricts or shortens your life.
Difficult is watching somebody you love have to endure any of this.
Difficult is what hundreds of thousands of people living with disabilities face every day and they very rarely complain about it.
It’s easy actually. In the big scheme of things.’
