HSBC and the special cage for people who use wheelchairs

I'd have thought anyone with half an education who ran a bank across the road from the headquarters of one of the biggest publishing companies in the world (DMGT) would spare a thought for the fact that every day there may be hundreds of journalists milling around thinking about what to write about or - more importantly for those companies spending millions trying to get their name in the Press - what NOT to write about.

Or so I'd have thought.

But then I didn’t design the new branch of HSBC.

Now to be fair part 1: This is a difficult part of town to run any business. A once proud haven of family-run shops has been taken over by usual chains from clone-town Britain and the customers have gradually decided to go shopping somewhere else. Somewhere interesting. The remaining customers are either American tourists on the look out for Princess Diana's former home - and there aren’t many of them these days - and transient residents with more money than manners. I don’t envy anyone in a retail management role here.

To be fair part 2: Its old branch was a mess. The lobby was open all night and became a makeshift hostel for the homeless and the drunk. The bank’s first customers of the day were generally greeted by that delicate whiff of public convenience and once through the door they were funnelled into a queue to wait their turn to shout at a hapless bank official about cheque books and other banking business. And the funny smell. It wasn’t good.

So it shut up shop and moved next door - into a magnificent four-storey stone building.

And be fair part 3: On the outside, the bank has respected the architecture. Its discreet placement of company logos should serve as a lesson to every other High Street in Britain. Even the cash machine kind of fits in with the building’s symmetry.

But then you step inside.

And the first thing that greets you is a step.

A step! A step? Yep, a step.

What on Earth were they thinking?

Don't they realise that not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to manage steps unaided?

Or that the law now grants all people the same rights of access whether or not they use a wheelchair to get around or can't manage steps for another reason?

Or that a proportion of the bank's own customers can't now get into the branch at all?

No they haven't. So alongside the step is a peculiarly cumbersome glass cage. A kind of oversized aquarium without water that goes up and down between the ground floor and the first floor, some 1ft up.

HSBC made £11bn profit last year. What a relief, then, they were able to spare around 0.000000010% of that to install the special lift for the 'grateful' wheelchair users of Kensington to squeeze into every time they want to pay in a cheque. If they want to install a lift why not put one in the wall like everyone else rather than go out of the way to get a 'special' one.

HSBC is paying £385,000 a year to rent the building, so there is no doubt some apparently plausible excuse for putting a step inside the doorway. But whatever it is, it won't wash. Because while banks are often accused of a whole range of unpleasantness, there's nothing in the banking code to suggest they ought to add making life difficult for disabled people to the mix.

So have any of the other journalists from across the road noticed the goings on at the new HSBC? Of course they have. Read more about this appalling place here.

And, even better, here.

Richard Browning, This is Money

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