Acces­si­bil­i­ty

Faith in Strangers — Acces­si­bil­i­ty Information

Last Reviewed: August 2023

Entrance

Our entrance is locat­ed between Bugsy’s Bowl­ing, and Ren­dezvous (now closed), on Ethel­bert Cres­cent. If the door is not open, you will need to buzz the door­bell for some­one to be able to let you in. Dur­ing pub­lic open­ing hours, the doors will be open. 

You will then walk into the lob­by, where there are anoth­er set of doors lead­ing to a stair­way up to the main venue. 

Toi­lets

Our toi­lets are gen­der neu­tral. We aim to sup­port an inclu­sive but safe and wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment at Faith in Strangers that fits the needs of as many walks of life as pos­si­ble. This means there is one main toi­let area, with a shared hand wash­ing area. The cubi­cle doors are total­ly pri­vate, with the doors reach­ing the top to bot­tom of the ceil­ing and floor. For those who wish to have more pri­va­cy, we have two total­ly self-con­tained cubi­cles (with sinks inside) — one on each side of the room when you first walk in, these are also slight­ly larg­er than the oth­er cubi­cles. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we do not have a separate/​specific dis­abled toi­let. Let our staff know if you need any assis­tance in find­ing the self-con­tained cubi­cles, and they will help you. 

Stairs, Lifts & Wheel­chair access

The build­ing is locat­ed on the 1^st floor of the build­ing (the venue struc­ture in the larg­er com­plex unfor­tu­nate­ly isn’t cur­rent­ly capa­ble of inter­nal rede­vel­op­ment to install a lift), and we don’t have lift or ramp access, only stairs — these do have a met­al handrail and two large land­ings. The stairs con­sist of 5 steps and a land­ing, and the 14 steps and a land­ing, and one fur­ther step into the main venue. We’re very sor­ry for the incon­ve­nience this may cause. Please do ask our staff mem­bers if you feel you need any assis­tance when climb­ing the stair­way, and they will be more than hap­py to help you. 

Trans­port Links

You can access Mar­gate via Nation­al Rail on the South­east­ern line. The quick­est route from Lon­don would be the St Pan­cras ser­vice to Margate/​Ramsgate on the High­Speed, which takes approx­i­mate­ly 1:15 – 1:30 hours. The train sta­tion is about a 15 – 20 minute walk away from Faith in Strangers, or a few min­utes in a taxi (Unit­ed Taxis, Thanet Cars or A2B Cars Thanet are all local and reli­able ser­vices). You can also catch the bus to the end of Edgar Road, by St Paul’s church from the direc­tion of Rams­gate, West­wood Cross, Can­ter­bury, or into Mar­gate Old Town. Cecil Street bus sta­tion near Mar­gate Old Town pro­vides bus ser­vices to a mul­ti­tude of areas across east Kent. 

Park­ing

There is on-street park­ing avail­able near­by, and often spaces right out­side the venue entrance, on Ethel­bert Cres­cent, alter­na­tive­ly there is park­ing around the cor­ner which leads to a ramp up onto the roof where there is a large free car park for guests. There is also a pay-and-dis­play car park just by the Lido, across the road. 

Sound/​Lighting

Please be aware that the venue will have flash­ing lights, and a num­ber of bright visuals/​projections dur­ing our evening hours and events, this may also occa­sion­al­ly include use of a smoke machine. Please do keep this in mind if you, or some­one with you, suf­fers from flash-induced epilep­sy. We are able to offer any­one who may be sen­si­tive to sound a pair of earplugs if they feel they’d be more com­fort­able wear­ing them, please ask at the Front of House desk and you’ll be giv­en a free pair. We also have a pair of ear defend­ers upon request.

Fire Exits

Fire exits are locat­ed at the side of the Ter­race Lounge, behind the sound desk, the front entrance down the stairs, and out the back of the venue- fol­low­ing past the toi­lets, meet­ing room and vocal booth, to go down the stairs and exit through the fire doors on the right. We have trained fire mar­shal staff who can assist in the case of an emer­gency. Please be remind­ed of our stair only access in the venue.

Guide/​Service Dogs

Guide/​Service dogs are always wel­come at Faith in Strangers. We have water bowls avail­able- just ask a mem­ber of staff and they will grab one for you. 

Carers/​Buddies

We are pleased to be able to offer a free ticket/​entry for our events, to a spec­i­fied car­er or ​‘Bud­dy’ (i.e. part of the Gig Buddies/​Stay Up Late pro­grammes), to any of our tick­et hold­ers with a disability. 

To receive a free car­er ticket/​entry, you will need to pro­vide one of the fol­low­ing types of doc­u­men­ta­tion that pro­vides evi­dence of your disability:

• Enti­tle­ment to Dis­abil­i­ty Liv­ing Allowance for chil­dren under 16 or Per­son­al Inde­pen­dent Pay­ments for those aged 16 – 64, either in the form of a let­ter stat­ing that the ben­e­fit has been award­ed, or the actu­al Allowance book

• Atten­dance Allowance or Car­er’s Allowance let­ter of award

• A Blue Badge

• In the case of visu­al impair­ment, a reg­is­tra­tion card known as the BD8 or a Cer­tifi­cate of Visu­al Impair­ment (CVI).

• Inter­na­tion­al Proof of Dis­abil­i­ty (ISA (inter­na­tion­al sym­bol of access) or sim­i­lar must be print­ed on it)

• A valid Cred­Abil­i­ty Access Card (also known as a Nim­bus Card)

Please note that doc­u­men­ta­tion for a free car­er ticket/​entry will need to be pro­vid­ed to us in advance, via e‑mail to immy@​faithinstrangers.​co.​uk, along with book­ing details of the paid tick­et hold­er to keep track of capac­i­ty & details.

Dietary Requirements/​Allergies

Our menu can cater to a mul­ti­tude of dietary require­ments. We apol­o­gise to any­one who suf­fers with a sesame aller­gy, as this fea­tures in some of our cock­tails, we also use egg white for our Whiskey/​Lavender Sours. Please ask at the bar if you have any oth­er queries.

Med­ical & Well­be­ing Support

At Faith in Strangers, we have an on-site first aider and men­tal health first aider, who is trained exten­sive­ly in child and adult safe­guard­ing, as well as epilep­sy response and med­ica­tion admin­is­tra­tion. We are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing our most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty and have a duty of care to pro­vide safe­guard­ing to those who we wel­come to Faith in Strangers. Please con­tact us if you would like to see a copy of our Safe­guard­ing Policy.

ONLINEWEB­SITENOTICE:

“Faith in Strangers is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a web­site that is acces­si­ble to the widest pos­si­ble audi­ence, regard­less of tech­nol­o­gy or abil­i­ty. We are active­ly work­ing to increase the acces­si­bil­i­ty and usabil­i­ty of our web­site and in doing so adhere to many of the avail­able stan­dards and guidelines.

This web­site endeav­ours to con­form to lev­el Double‑A of the World Wide Web Con­sor­tium (W3C) Web Con­tent Acces­si­bil­i­ty Guide­lines 2.1. These guide­lines explain how to make web con­tent more acces­si­ble for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Con­for­mance with these guide­lines will help make the web more user friend­ly for all people.

This site has been built using code com­pli­ant with W3C stan­dards for HTML and CSS. The site dis­plays cor­rect­ly in cur­rent browsers and using stan­dards com­pli­ant HTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also dis­play it correctly.

Whilst Faith in Strangers strives to adhere to the accept­ed guide­lines and stan­dards for acces­si­bil­i­ty and usabil­i­ty, it is not always pos­si­ble to do so in all areas of the website.

We are con­tin­u­al­ly seek­ing out solu­tions that will bring all areas of the site up to the same lev­el of over­all web acces­si­bil­i­ty. In the mean­time should you expe­ri­ence any dif­fi­cul­ty in access­ing the Faith in Strangers web­site, please don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us.”