Disability discrimination?

[RichA]

It wouldn't happen because they are totally different scenarios and trying to draw comparison is just plain daft. You do not have wet slopes, muddy ground, areas that need protecting, etc in a supermarket. As I previously said, it is never black and white in these situations, despite people trying to make it so.

You aren't reading the information. He isn't complaining about occasions where all buggies are banned for obviously sensible safety reasons. He is describing a scenario where they are allowing buggies, but only the club's buggies, at a cost to a member who already has his own buggy, which they have banned.
The comparison was made because both scenarios involve organisations having responsibilities under the Equality Act.

 

[Neilds]

You aren't reading the information. He isn't complaining about occasions where all buggies are banned for obviously sensible safety reasons. He is describing a scenario where they are allowing buggies, but only the club's buggies, at a cost to a member who already has his own buggy, which they have banned.
The comparison was made because both scenarios involve organisations having responsibilities under the Equality Act.

I am reading the information. They have banned personal buggies but have put in place what might be considered reasonable adjustments ie club buggies.

Also, we are only hearing one side of the discussion, nothing from the club which may fill in some other information that would be required to make a legal decision.

 

[RichA]

I am reading the information. They have banned personal buggies but have put in place what might be considered reasonable adjustments ie club buggies.

Also, we are only hearing one side of the discussion, nothing from the club which may fill in some other information that would be required to make a legal decision.

Banning a disabled person from using their own accessibility equipment and charging them a fee to hire similar equipment is not a reasonable adjustment. There's plenty of advice about precisely this online.

I don't think anybody is expecting legally binding arbitration from a largely anonymous online forum.

 

[Bunkermagnet]

Banning a disabled person from using their own accessibility equipment and charging them a fee to hire similar equipment is not a reasonable adjustment. There's plenty of advice about precisely this online.

I don't think anybody is expecting legally binding arbitration from a largely anonymous online forum.

Whilst I have some sympathy with the information given so far, we don’t actually know the full story. Perhaps someone has complained about the OP taking his buggy somewhere the membership have been told not to and other members have made a complaint to the club, and because of that this GPS device is now a requirement on all buggies used on the course.

 

[Slab]

He hasn't said that the club has banned buggies. He says that the club has banned his buggy and is insisting that he pays extra to hire one of their buggies. It's not about an obvious common sense blanket restriction for particularly inclement weather.

It's worth checking the legislation, as that does not fall within the definition of a reasonable adjustment.

Forget that it's a golf course for a second and imagine if a supermarket chain banned disabled customers from using their own accessibility equipment while shopping and demanded that they pay extra to hire something from the supermarket for their visit. It wouldn't happen.

The golf club is a business and has responsibilities under the law which it is hopefully just misunderstanding.

Interesting analogy, for discussion sake;
I suppose if the supermarket had cause & reason to ban personal machines due to the potential for those units to damage the store &/or pose a safety risk, and offered to hire store owned units instead plus the option for users to retro fit their personal units so they wouldn’t be able to enter these high risk areas, that’d be quite close to the situation the OP seems to be facing at the golf club.

Would it still be as certain that it wouldn’t happen? I genuinely don't know

 

[jim8flog]

I have been a buggy user for more than 30 years. Over the years I have seen more and more clubs ban the use of the of privately owned buggies.

To some extent I can understand your clubs position judging by the way some private buggy owners drive here. We have a buggy route for the times when it is needed and quite a number of the buggy users completely ignore the request to use the buggy.

What I fine frustrating about when watching them is the fact that they are on a buggy and it's not like walking - it only takes battery power not leg power to go the longer route.

 

[RichA]

From the EG website...

 

[Neilds]

From the EG website...
View attachment 59837

The second paragraph could be used to say that private users should be expected to have the GPS system fitted. However paragraph 3 is more on side with the OP so still not clear cut.

 

[The Squirrel]

I’d agree that the case is very far from “cut and dried”.

The requirement is for reasonable adjustment. There has obviously been an attempt to comply with this, so the question will be whether it reaches the threshold of reasonable. That will turn on the individual and specific facts - and above all else, on an internet forum we don’t know all of the facts and only have one side of the story.

The OP reports that he has had ‘scary’ issues with boggy ground before. The club having concern to prevent this is clearly both very reasonable and sensible.
It doesn’t seem realistic to inspect, assess and test every single inch of the huge playing area on every single day for buggy safety, so some sort of blanket policy over the winter months again seems reasonable.
A restriction to only allow buggies that are GPS modified to only allow them in safe zones on the course does seem eminently reasonable as it is safety based and we all know that golf course users don’t always follow rules, either inadvertently or deliberately.
The club have agreed that he can use his own buggy so the suggestions above that he is banned from doing so are entirely misplaced as is his argument attempting to frame the situation as the same.

The question I have is that it seems strange and unlikely that it is impossible for the GPS location not to be turned on and off fairly simply. It is likely password protected at most. There obviously are reasonable grounds why OP shouldn’t be given that password (defeats the point of having GPS restriction in the first place if you can turn it off whenever you like!) but it’s surely possible to set up an arrangement where they simply have to ask the pro shop or manager or whatever if they want it disabled. If this is so then the objection that it renders the buggy useless elsewhere falls away.

If OP wants his personal buggy upgraded rather than using the ones available then it does seem reasonable to bear the cost of that, particularly as it would allow him to use the buggy in the same way in the same circumstances at other golf courses with similar setups - and if it is a specific golf buggy (seems to be?) then this would be the only use case. It’s unlikely to be found reasonable to expect one club to bear the whole cost of a player doing business with their direct competitors although this specific point is far from certain.

The case seems to boil down to the OP wanting to use their own buggy without GPS restriction while the club insist that GPS restriction should be in place. This is more likely than not to be found that the club are being reasonable as they can very likely point to safety incidents from buggies going where they shouldn’t and would rightly argue that the restriction is for the player’s own welfare, as any such incident that disabled the buggy could be very serious given the player themselves has emphasised their lack of mobility.

tl;dr = more likely than not, no discrimination. If you cannot mutually agree a workable solution with disabling GPS when needed, as suggested above, then you moving on to a new club seems the most sensible course of action for everyone involved.

 

[IanM]

Paragraph 3 is the clincher and seems clear. I'd be referring the Club to the EG Advice and asking for comment. A negative response should be referred to EG.

That Advice seems to be for all users, not just disabled users. Unless anyone knows different.

 

[Slab]

Paragraph 3 is the clincher and seems clear. I'd be referring the Club to the EG Advice and asking for comment. A negative response should be referred to EG.

That Advice seems to be for all users, not just disabled users. Unless anyone knows different.

Yeah read that with interest, although the 1st line of paragraph 2 means the personal buggy needs "to be used in the same way" as on-site buggys and it kinda cant be unless its also fitted with gps

 

[louise_a]

Not exactly the same and I do not know all the details, but we had an issue with someone who had to use a buggy at our course, I believe the person took legal advice and as a result we now have a buggy policy which allows those with medical exceptions to use their buggy all year round. We introduced routes for buggies depending on conditions but there is no policing of those routes.

 

[The Squirrel]

Paragraph 3 is the clincher and seems clear. I'd be referring the Club to the EG Advice and asking for comment. A negative response should be referred to EG.

That Advice seems to be for all users, not just disabled users. Unless anyone knows different.

Well its not the clincher in terms of it's merely Counsel advice - which albeit well qualified, is just one person's opinion. Until/unless it was tested in Court, that's all it is. I concede you do need a very good reason to ignore Counsel's advice

I'd also argue it's also very much not the clincher in this particular case though:

In this case the club has met the criteria for Para1 and Para 2. They have agreed to let the person use their own buggy "in the same way as any buggies you will also use onsite" (i.e. with GPS restrictions). Therefore the test specified in Para3 has not been met - the golfer is not required to use a buggy owned or leased by the club.

The fact that their initial written communication did require club-buggy use wasn't great, I admit. However look at the timescales - on request they modified their new policy the very same day. So they've made an error implementing something new, but corrected it immediately when that was brought to their attention. For a small organisation, a court would almost certainly find that they have acted reasonably in doing so and so would not press that issue further.

This guidance also seems to support that the golfer should be responsible for the cost of their own buggy meeting the course requirements. Note that these explicitly state that the club can impose requirements on the buggy used (two examples are given) and there is no suggestion that the cost of meeting these requirements should be borne by the club - in fact the opposite is strongly implied by the guidance stating that the golfer themselves is "responslble" for these. The use of the word "commonly" suggests that although these two examples are given, and are the most frequent requirements, this is neither a mandatory nor an exhaustive list and clubs may vary away from it - (e.g. the GPS in this case).

Sorry, but within our limited knowledge of this specific scenario, the guidance does not assist the golfer's case.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

Clubs should have a buggy policy in place and make every adjustment possible to ensure buggies can be used that doesn’t cause any health and safety issues - care of the course doesn’t come into it

If a GPS is required for Health and Safety purposes to ensure a buggy goes around the course safely then that’s appropriate measures

The golfer then has a choice , fit a GPS onto his buggy to allow it to use the route or use a club one

Many courses have the gps now to ensure buggies stick to routes because unfortunately there have been too many instances of people ignoring routes and causing damage and injury


It’s similar to courses that request trolleys use hedgehog wheels for purposes during the winter

 

[inc0gnito]

He hasn't said that the club has banned buggies. He says that the club has banned his buggy and is insisting that he pays extra to hire one of their buggies. It's not about an obvious common sense blanket restriction for particularly inclement weather.

It's worth checking the legislation, as that does not fall within the definition of a reasonable adjustment.

Forget that it's a golf course for a second and imagine if a supermarket chain banned disabled customers from using their own accessibility equipment while shopping and demanded that they pay extra to hire something from the supermarket for their visit. It wouldn't happen.

The golf club is a business and has responsibilities under the law which it is hopefully just misunderstanding.

He didn’t say ‘his’ buggy. The wording was “all personal buggies”. That would be flat out signalling one person out. So I must assume that there is some kind of difference between personal buggies and those provided by the course. Maybe they are more destructive, heavy, different wheels, or whatnot. Although by deduction, it appears to be down to the gps. And if so there should be a reasonable middle ground they can agree on.

 

[Bunkermagnet]

Not taking any sides here, but is this one of those threads started with a contentious/emotive subject where the OP having started the debate doesn't return and the thread meanders along?

 

[Oops!]

1)
I think the OP would have had (!) a good chance to continue using his own buggy despite the club policy (severely disabled!). The fact that this would have been an exception could have been made clear to the other members with a corresponding sticker, as on the car (due to the use of disabled parking spaces).

2)
Nevertheless, the whole discussion here and now is obsolete and at best hypothetical, because the OP has already terminated his membership in this club.

It would be interesting at most in terms of possible compensation for pain and suffering or damages. But for that, the OP probably needs a lawyer, and according to his own statement, he has no money left for that (!?).

 

[KenL]

If someone has a medical reason to use a buggy then they should be allowed to use it.

If it is too dangerous to use it then they should be prevented from doing so.

The greens staff will continue to drive their, much heavier the buggies, vehicles around the course.

 

[D-S]

If someone has a medical reason to use a buggy then they should be allowed to use it.

If it is too dangerous to use it then they should be prevented from doing so.

The greens staff will continue to drive their, much heavier the buggies, vehicles around the course.

Not always, if the ground is saturated and the greens do not need cutting (often the case in winter) then our greenstaff will not take machines on to the course unless they can reach that area via hard standing paths and/or rough - not going over the playing area at all.

 

[Neilds]

Not always, if the ground is saturated and the greens do not need cutting (often the case in winter) then our greenstaff will not take machines on to the course unless they can reach that area via hard standing paths and/or rough - not going over the playing area at all.

Agree with you. Our staff have also announced that they aren’t cutting the fairways in a diamond pattern over the winter, they are just going up and down to minimise the turning and potential damage