About Us, Without Us: Disabled People and Built Environment Community Engagement Policies in London

This paper examines policies shaping community engagement for architecture projects and urban planning policies in London, to analyse the extent to which they address disabled people and accessibility. It reviews relevant national, regional, and local policies affecting London, including quantitative comparisons of London planning authorities' Statements of Community Involvement (SCIs) which outline approaches to consultation in specific localities. The results of the review show that these policies are often unclear and lenient when discussing disabled accessibility, where this is addressed at all. The paper recommends that policy makers introduce mandatory universal accessibility clauses to community engagement policies and commit to establishing and supporting local access forums. It finally recommends that future research examine the experiences of participants in these processes to measure impact and establish a universal design approach for community engagement.