Representatives of the Southland Kindergarten Association (SKA) and the Department of Building and Housing will meet in Invercargill tomorrow morning for a hearing on access points at the new Cottage Kindergarten.
At the time it was completed the kindergarten struck problems with getting a code of compliance from the Invercargill City Council due to the height of a magna latch on the gate around the entrance veranda.
At 1230mm the magna latch does not meet the major provisions of the Building Act 2004 to ensure that people with disabilities are able to enter and carry out normal activities.
Further confusing the issue were concerns from the SKA that dropping the latch to 1200mm would breach a Ministry of Education licensing requirement of 1600mm, in effect conflicting the edicts of both ministries.
However, when contacted, the Ministry of Education's early childhood education group manager Karl Le Quesne said the ministry's early childhood education regulations did not specify a height for gate latches.
"The regulations are situation specific and look at overall measures taken by an ECE service to ensure children cannot leave the centre on their own," Mr Le Quesne said.
"The ministry can only approve a service's license once it has received evidence of compliance with the Building Code."
Hence, the onus now falls back on the Ministry of Building and Housing, the body to which SKA will present it's case to tomorrow.
SKA president Paddy Lewis said the issue hadn't arisen until it was time to get a code of compliance and said the ICC could not be faulted.
"They were just doing their job to the law," Mr Lewis said.
Having been issued a temporary Certificate for Public Use, tomorrow's meeting was a matter of "getting it resolved" he said.
The main point of SKA's argument will be that safety of children is paramount, with Mr Lewis suggesting that the location of kindergartens in the more busier parts of town would put children in significant risk if their magna latches were lowered to Building Code requirements.
"We just can't go along with that."
He said he had spoken to a number of disabled people about the issue and "they said 'hey' it's a no brainer for us".
"There are differing a types of disabilities too. There's physically impaired and mentally impaired and what do you do for blind people?"
Mr Lewis said SKA would also request the Minister for Building and Construction made a dispensation to the code, one which would apply to early childhood education.
