Skip to content

Advocacy and Access Support
Practical support when systems create barriers

Being refused access, being challenged about your assistance dog, or being expected to repeatedly justify your needs can be exhausting.

PAL CIC provides disability-led, person-centred advocacy for assistance-dog handlers and owner-trainers. We help people understand their options, communicate with organisations and challenge barriers without taking control away from the person affected.

Our primary focus is assistance-dog access and the disability-related issues directly connected to it.

To ask for advocacy support, email contact@palcic.org.

What We Can Help With

Shops, Venues and Other Services

We may be able to support you following an assistance-dog access problem involving:

  • Shops and supermarkets
  • Cafés, restaurants and hospitality
  • Leisure and community facilities
  • Entertainment venues
  • Hotels and other accommodation
  • Healthcare settings
  • Public services
  • Other organisations providing goods, facilities or services

Support may include helping you understand the organisation’s policy, preparing a complaint or explaining what a reasonable resolution could look like.

Taxis and Transport

We may be able to help with:

  • Taxi or private-hire refusals
  • Journey cancellations involving an assistance dog
  • Attempts to charge an additional fee
  • Problems reporting an incident
  • Complaints to an operator
  • Complaints to a licensing authority
  • Requests for driver or staff training
  • Recurring patterns of access problems
  • Other assistance-dog barriers affecting travel

Where possible, experiences shared with PAL CIC may also inform our wider work with transport providers, councillors and licensing bodies.

Workplaces

Our support may include:

  • Assistance-dog reasonable-adjustment requests
  • Preparing for conversations with an employer
  • Explaining the dog’s role and support needs
  • Responding to concerns or proposed restrictions
  • Reviewing an assistance-dog workplace policy
  • Helping identify practical arrangements
  • Supporting an internal complaint or grievance
  • Signposting to employment or legal specialists

We cannot determine whether a particular adjustment is legally required, but we can help you present your request clearly and practically.

Education

We may be able to support assistance-dog matters involving:

  • Schools
  • Colleges
  • Universities
  • Training providers
  • Placements
  • Student accommodation
  • Educational trips and activities

This may include help requesting reasonable adjustments, preparing supporting information, responding to proposed restrictions or navigating an internal complaint.

We recognise that access to education can involve wider support needs. An assistance dog should be considered as part of an individual’s overall support, not automatically as a replacement for other reasonable adjustments.

Housing and Accommodation

Depending on capacity, we may be able to offer general advocacy support where an assistance dog is relevant to:

  • A tenancy or licence
  • A no-pets policy
  • Supported accommodation
  • Student accommodation
  • Requests for reasonable adjustments
  • Communication with a landlord, agent or housing provider

Housing law can be complex. PAL CIC does not provide legal advice and may recommend seeking support from a housing adviser or solicitor.

Policies and Systemic Barriers

Our work is not limited to individual incidents.

We may also:

  • Raise recurring concerns with organisations
  • Recommend changes to policies and procedures
  • Offer assistance-dog awareness training
  • Engage with councillors, MPs and public bodies
  • Contribute lived-experience evidence to consultations
  • Record anonymised patterns of access refusals
  • Encourage organisations to improve staff training
  • Campaign for more accessible local services

Supporting one person can help create better access for the people who come after them.

How Our Advocacy Works

1. You Tell Us What Happened

Contact PAL CIC with a brief summary of:

  • What happened
  • When and where it happened
  • Which organisation was involved
  • Whether you have already complained
  • What response you have received
  • What outcome you would like
  • Any deadlines you know about
  • Any communication or accessibility adjustments you need

You do not need to produce a perfect timeline before asking for help.

2. We Review the Situation

We will consider:

  • Whether the issue falls within PAL CIC’s area of work
  • What information or evidence may be relevant
  • What steps have already been taken
  • Whether there are important deadlines
  • What support we have the capacity to provide
  • Whether another organisation would be better placed to help

We will be honest if we are unable to take something on.

3. We Agree the Support

Before beginning substantial work, we will explain what PAL CIC can and cannot do.

Support may include:

  • Helping organise events into a timeline
  • Identifying relevant policies or guidance
  • Helping draft an email, letter or complaint
  • Reviewing a response
  • Helping prepare questions for a meeting
  • Supporting a reasonable-adjustment request
  • Helping identify an appropriate escalation route
  • Contacting an organisation with your authority
  • Signposting to specialist advice
  • Offering training or policy support to the organisation involved

The support offered will depend on the issue, urgency, complexity and PAL CIC’s capacity.

4. You Remain in Control

We work alongside people rather than speaking over them.

Unless there is a safeguarding or legal reason that requires a different response, we will not:

  • Contact an organisation without your knowledge
  • Share identifiable information without an appropriate basis
  • Publish your experience without your permission
  • Agree an outcome on your behalf
  • Escalate a complaint against your wishes
  • Pressure you to pursue a case further than you want to

You can decide how involved you want PAL CIC to be.

What Information Is Helpful?

Where it is safe and possible to do so, try to keep:

  • The date and approximate time of the incident
  • The location
  • The organisation’s name
  • Names or descriptions of the people involved
  • Booking details or receipts
  • Screenshots of cancellations or messages
  • Copies of policies or signs
  • Emails and complaint responses
  • Complaint or reference numbers
  • Details of witnesses
  • A short account of what was said
  • Notes about the impact on you
  • Any financial loss caused by the incident

Please preserve original records where possible.

Do not place yourself or your dog at risk to collect evidence. Your safety and your dog’s welfare are more important than obtaining a photograph, recording or confrontation.

What Outcome Can We Seek?

The right outcome will depend on what happened and what you want.

Possible outcomes may include:

  • An explanation
  • An apology
  • Correction of inaccurate information
  • A policy change
  • Staff or driver training
  • Confirmation of future access arrangements
  • Reimbursement of a direct loss
  • A complaint investigation
  • Escalation to a licensing authority or another body
  • A practical reasonable adjustment
  • Wider organisational learning

PAL CIC cannot guarantee that an organisation will agree, apologise or change its decision.

Advocacy Without Escalation

Not every situation needs to begin with a formal complaint.

Where appropriate, PAL CIC may help resolve an issue through:

  • Clear information
  • A constructive conversation
  • Informal contact
  • Policy clarification
  • Practical problem-solving
  • Assistance-dog awareness training

However, choosing a collaborative approach does not mean accepting discrimination or ignoring repeated harm. We will support you to consider the approach that best reflects your goals.

Our Wider Campaigning Work

With appropriate consent and data protection safeguards, PAL CIC may use anonymised information from individual experiences to identify wider patterns.

For example, this might help us understand:

  • Where access refusals are happening
  • Whether particular policies cause repeated problems
  • Which sectors need additional training
  • Whether complaint systems are accessible
  • How barriers affect disabled people’s independence
  • Where local or national decision-makers need to act

Individual case information will not be publicly identified without permission.

PAL CIC is politically impartial in its organisational work. This does not prevent us from challenging discrimination, advocating for disabled people’s rights or asking elected representatives to take action.

What We Cannot Provide

PAL CIC is not a law firm or regulated legal-advice service.

We cannot:

  • Act as your solicitor
  • Represent you in court or at a tribunal
  • Guarantee the legal merits or outcome of a claim
  • Provide emergency intervention
  • Replace specialist employment, housing or welfare-rights advice
  • Make decisions for you
  • Force an organisation to respond
  • Guarantee that a complaint will succeed
  • Take on every request we receive

We may provide general information and practical advocacy, but this should not be treated as formal legal advice.

Legal and complaint deadlines can apply. Contacting PAL CIC does not pause or extend them. Where a matter may require legal action, you should seek appropriately qualified advice as soon as possible.

Safeguarding and Respectful Communication

PAL CIC aims to provide a safe, accessible and respectful advocacy service.

We understand that people may contact us while upset, exhausted or angry. You will not be judged for expressing the impact an incident has had on you.

However, we may pause or end support where:

  • Staff, volunteers or others are threatened or abused
  • Information is knowingly misrepresented
  • We are asked to act dishonestly or unlawfully
  • Continuing would create an unmanaged conflict of interest
  • The matter is outside our competence
  • PAL CIC no longer has the capacity to provide safe support

Where possible, we will explain the decision and provide appropriate signposting.

Costs and Donations

Individual advocacy support is generally offered on a donation basis, subject to PAL CIC’s capacity.

What we can provide will depend on:

  • Current workload
  • The complexity of the issue
  • The amount of work required
  • Available funding
  • The person’s circumstances
  • Whether another service is better placed to help

No individual will be pressured to donate.

More extensive organisational consultancy, policy reviews, or commissioned work may be charged separately. Any fee will be explained and agreed upon before work begins.

Information for Businesses and Organisations

If PAL CIC contacts your organisation, our aim is usually to help resolve the concern and reduce the likelihood of it happening again.

We welcome constructive engagement and may be able to provide:

  • Assistance-dog awareness training
  • Policy guidance
  • Staff workshops
  • Support identifying practical adjustments
  • Lived-experience insight
  • Recommendations for accessible complaints procedures

More information is available on our Training for Businesses and Organisations page.

Businesses can also consult the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s assistance-dog guidance.

Ask for Advocacy Support

Please email contact@palcic.org with:

  • Your name
  • Your preferred contact method
  • A brief description of what happened
  • The organisation involved
  • Relevant dates
  • What action you have already taken
  • Any response you have received
  • The outcome you would like
  • Any known deadline
  • Any accessibility or communication adjustments you need

Please do not send large quantities of sensitive information during your first enquiry. We can explain what is relevant after reviewing your initial message.

If the situation is outside our remit, we will try to provide appropriate signposting where possible.

Email contact@palcic.org to ask for support.

Alongside you, not speaking over you.