JD Wetherspoon’s policy to refuse to serve disabled customers who do not have photo ID for their assistance dogs could be breaking the law, the equality watchdog has said.<\/p>\n
The pub chain has had a ban on dogs \u2013 with the exception of assistance dogs \u2013 in its UK pubs for a number of years.<\/p>\n
However, in May last year the firm introduced a new policy to ask anyone wanting admission with a dog to produce identification from a charity called Assistance Dogs UK (ADUK).<\/p>\n
The BBC has spoken to a number of disabled people who said they have been challenged and refused service if they do not have ID.<\/p>\n
One woman said she felt sick and humiliated when she was challenged to show identification for her guide dog.<\/p>\n
Wetherspoon said it believed its policy, which was an adjustment to its usual “no dogs” rule, was lawful and reasonable and that they had taken legal advice on it.<\/p>\n
It said it was brought in to protect customers after seeing an increase in the number of people trying to gain access to its premises with dogs, using ID and jackets, which can be purchased online without showing proof of training or a medical need.<\/p>\n
However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it had now written to the pub chain after it received complaints from disabled people and said it was concerned the policy may not comply with UK law. <\/p>\n
The charity Assistance Dogs UK said it believed, from its understanding of the law, that the pub chain’s policy was discriminatory and that no identification was legally required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JD Wetherspoon’s policy to refuse to serve disabled customers who do not have photo ID for their assistance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-411756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}