Overview

This review focuses on hearing loop acceptance and awareness as part of the Hearing Link "Let's Loop the UK" project.

Transport & Parking

Access

Signage is poor. Two room hearing loops. Only one was working. No portable loops. 2 rooms have permanently installed room hearing loops. They were in the main hall and the lounge. In both rooms there were 7 neck loops, 1 stethosets, 1 microphone and 1 tie clip microphone. This was with the exception of the main hall which didn’t have a tie clip microphone. There were also 10 rechargeable batteries in each room. Unfortunately, each of the adapters holding these were turned off and not charging the batteries and therefore making the stethoset and neck loops unusable. There were also no disposable ear protectors for the stethoset which would also have made them unusable. There weren’t any batteries for the microphone or tie clip microphones in the lounge. However there were working batteries in the main hall and the microphone and the tie clip microphone both worked well. The coverage was good throughout the whole of the main hall All of the equipment is brand new and it is a shame that they aren’t usable due to the lack of available batteries/ charging. The signage was excellent on the doors to both rooms as you entered the room. We advised that there should be more signage up in each room and that it would preferably be blue as it’s more recognisable. We established that when people make a booking that there is an option to request that they would like to have access to a hearing loop. Rosemarie expressed concerns that she hadn’t been able to access the equipment when she had previously visited the venue. He said that there was now always someone on site so equipment should be accessible in the future

Toilets

I don’t know whether or not there was an accessible toilet.

Staff

The member of staff who met us hadn’t been told we were coming however he was still very helpful and knew how to use everything. The staff member said that he would speak to his superiors to ask for batteries and ear protectors to be ordered so that all of the equipment could be used.