St George’s Hall, Bradford

Accessibility report

Mixed Doable, but with caveats worth knowing first.

Where: St George's Hall, Bridge Street, Bradford, BD1 1JT Visits: A couple of times

• Step-free entrance Yes
• Lift to all needed floors Yes
• Accessible toilet Partly
• Getting there (boarding & alighting) Yes
• Staff knew what they were doing Yes

What was good

Next door to Bradford Interchange — transport could not be easier. Lifts from reception to the theatre and a ramp back to street level. Same friendly staff and good prices as the Alhambra.

What was bad

At seated shows the wheelchair goes at the aisle end of tightly-packed rows: at the interval people climb over the chair and kick your feet, and you block two or three rows. At concerts there are no allocated wheelchair spaces at all — a floor free-for-all spent stopping drunk people falling onto the chair, while able-bodied seating gets the raised level. Very few accessible toilets, seemingly all downstairs.

St George’s Hall is the Alhambra’s sister venue — same Bradford Theatres group, same good prices, same friendly staff — and it sits next door to Bradford Interchange, which makes getting there about as easy as public transport gets. We have only been a couple of times, though, and the reason is everything below.

Getting in: genuinely good

Credit first. There are lifts from the main reception up to the theatre, and a ramp from upstairs back down to street level, so you have options in both directions. The building itself — the oldest concert hall still in use in the UK, opened in 1853 — handles wheels better than plenty of venues a century and a half younger.

Seated shows: parked in the stampede lane

For some shows, wheelchairs are placed at the end of the seated rows — on the aisle side. That is fine right up until the interval. Then everyone who NEEDS to be first to the bar or the bathroom comes past you: climbing over the back of the chair, standing on your feet, kicking them as they squeeze through, because the rows are so close together. And because the chair sits in the aisle end, you end up blocking two, sometimes three rows of people trying to get out.

The fix seems obvious to us: put the wheelchairs at the other end of the rows — the end nobody is fighting through to reach the bar. But what do we know.

Concerts: a free-for-all we now avoid

For some events, concerts especially, there are no allocated wheelchair spaces at all. It is standing on the floor and a free-for-all, fighting for floor space — while seats for able-bodied people are set up a couple of steps up at the back. At the last concert we went to, we spent half the night trying to stop drunk guys and girls falling onto the chair. A wheelchair sits lower than a standing crowd, so from behind it looks like there is an empty space in front of us — and people keep trying to occupy it.

That is not a comfort problem, it is a safety problem, and it is why we have mostly stopped coming. Allocated, protected wheelchair spaces at standing events — ideally on the raised level where the seats currently go — would change our verdict overnight.

Toilets

Wheelchair-accessible toilets are very limited in number, and as far as we have seen they are all downstairs. Factor that into interval timing, especially given the aisle situation above.

Our advice for booking

For a seated show, it is workable: book, enjoy the prices, and brace for the interval. For a standing concert, ring the box office first and ask, specifically, whether there is an allocated wheelchair space and where it is. If the answer is vague, think hard — we speak from experience.

Need to know

• Address: Bridge Street, Bradford, BD1 1JT — directly opposite Bradford Interchange (bus and rail), a short walk from Forster Square station
• Website: bradford-theatres.co.uk/st-georges-hall
• Box office: 01274 432000 (shared with the Alhambra — same group)
• Getting in: lifts from main reception to the theatre; ramp from upstairs to street level