An 18-year-old woman who was escorted out of a nightclub after she was told her wheelchair was a safety risk has described the ordeal as “embarrassing and infuriating”.
Maddie Haining, from Oldham, told the BBC she went to Club Tropicana in Manchester’s Gay Village with a friend but within five minutes of entering was asked by a bar manager to leave.
She posted a clip to Instagram of the conversation and said: “It’s not okay to be removed from bars because you are disabled and different to other people. If they can be in there then why shouldn’t we.”
Maddie told the BBC she had been out with a friend at a few other bars in the city that night before they arrived at the club.
She said security staff helped lift her wheelchair into the venue and initially told her and her friend there was no problem with them being there. But after her friend went to buy a drink, security came over and told her they were “really sorry” but they had been told to ask her to leave, she said.
Maddie said she asked to speak to the manager, but he was “horribly rude, really, really rude the whole time he was speaking to me.”
She said: “I asked ‘how was I a safety risk?’ If I was a safety risk they wouldn’t have let me in in the first place. They wouldn’t explain why, and then the story changed to that I was a fire risk.”
Maddie then showed them the Equality Act on her phone to explain that wheelchair users cannot be removed over a fire risk as evacuation plans must be inclusive.
She said: “He wasn’t having any of it. He just kept repeating himself and not acknowledging anything.”
The BBC said Manchester City Council confirmed it was looking into what happened after Maddie complained to its licensing committee.
The BBC also quoted a statement from Club Tropicana which said: “We have not been contacted directly by the complainant but we have been made aware of the incident.”
Maddie told BBC Radio Manchester she eventually decided to leave the club but before she was escorted out asked for the names and contact details of staff so she could file a complaint.
She said: “It was infuriating as I showed them the law and they had not taken any of it on board. I’d never had anything like this happen before, and I know my rights. Being disabled for nearly five years you kind of just learn about this stuff.”