Changing Places Case Study: Whitlingham Country Park

Written by Kit Garrett
September 4, 2023

Described as ‘a favourite amongst both city dwellers and countryside enthusiasts alike, offering a tranquil location to get away from it all’, Norwich’s Whitlingham Country Park is now set to become a favourite amongst disabled people – and their families, too – thanks to the opening of a brand new modular Changing Places toilet.

Accessible Tourism – It’s Too Important To Ignore

Maintained and run by the Whitlingham Charitable Trust and Norfolk County Council, Whitlingham Country Park offers rest and recreation around the Whitlingham Great Broad. The Broad itself, a man-made lake created by quarrying for construction in the wider Norwich area, has become a hub of activity in recent years, with an aqua activities centre, café, fitness classes, canoe and kayak hire, and much more besides on offer.

55% of respondents to a Research Institute for Disabled Consumers poll from 2022 stated that country parks are considered a priority for Changing Places toilets. With disabled people and their travelling parties contributing over £15.3bn to the UK economy annually, it made moral and financial sense for the Trust to plan a CPT project. Funding made available to local authorities through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities helped to turn those plans into reality.

Make A Difference To Disabled People

RISE Rises to the Occasion

Whitlingham Charitable Trust commissioned RISE to install a modular Changing Places toilet as part of their efforts to bring the leisure offerings at the Country Park to a broader audience.

At RISE, we specialise in turnkey delivery of Changing Places toilets projects. That meant, from day one, our team were on-site, surveying potential locations and making preparations for groundworks. Once initial scoping was complete, we moved into planning, where we don’t just provide all drawings needed and let the client tailor the pod’s fit and finish to their needs, we also take care of the bureaucratic end, too!

As one of the UK’s leading installers of CPT solutions, RISE has built up long-term and productive relationships with planning departments all over the country. While this in no way offers us any special treatment, it does help – we know the ins and outs of the planning process for most local authorities. We can help you and your project to navigate the sometimes murky waters of planning and building control applications.

With planning cleared and the modular pod specced up to the client’s desired exterior and interior finishes, we executed our build and groundworks plans. As all of our pods are built off-site, we were able to make sure the new facility was feature-complete before shipping it down the coast to Norfolk to simply be craned into position. This resulted in less than two days of disruption for the client, and no significant impact on the daily running of the business, so critical in this era of increased running costs.

Here’s to Amazing Days Out In Norfolk

With this most recent addition to its extensive facilities, Whitlingham Country Park has marked itself out as a great accessible tourism destination for anyone who travels with a disabled person with complex needs, like muscular dystrophy or motor neurone disease. We hope it leads to many happy days out in nature for everyone in the surrounding area – and maybe even from farther afield, too!

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