Mum’s pram ‘a safety risk’,

The building manager threw his toys out of the cot when a mother tried to park her pram under the stairwell of the three-storey apartment with no lift. reports.

A West Auckland mum has been told her baby’s pram is ‘‘a potential health and safety risk’’ at the apartment building where she lives.

The building manager has banned Emma McInnes from parking her stroller under the stairwell at the three-storey

Ko¯ kihi Apartments in Waterview.

But the apartments don’t have a lift – nor is there ground-level storage for the likes of prams, mobility scooters, or wheelchairs.

Lugging the pram up and down stairs, in the meantime, had resulted in back pain which now required weekly physiotherapy, McInnes said. ‘‘If anyone’s health and safety is at risk, it’s mine.’’

McInnes was issued with two breach notices, within a matter of days, both ordering the pram’s removal.

‘‘It’s a terrible excuse, from an accessibility perspective,’’ said McInnes, who is the co-founder of urban design collective Women in Urbanism.

‘‘All buildings should be accessible, as people’s circumstances can change. There’s no way a wheelchair user could live in our building right now.’’

Yet the building management company was unapologetic.

‘‘She purchased a cheaper apartment – with no elevator access, and no storage – and is now upset because she didn’t think about the consequences,’’ Active Building Management managing director Brady Williams said.

McInnes originally sought permission from the building’s body corporate committee, ‘‘who were really into it at first’’ until the building manager scared them off, she said.

‘‘He said everyone would be liable if the building caught fire, and my pram was somehow involved.’’

Williams insisted ‘‘initial support for the idea’’ dissipated after the committee was informed the pram was a danger rather than a hassle.

The pram obstructed access to ‘‘a hatch that leads to important equipment’’, Williams explained. And needing to move it to access that hatch would ‘‘create another hazard, blocking a fire egress hallway’’.

The building manager was only enforcing the body corporate’s own rules.

An independent fire engineer thought the building manager at Ko¯ kihi wanted to avoid setting a more dangerous precedent.

‘‘The pram itself doesn’t pose a fire risk, but storing combustible items within that area possibly does,’’ Institution of Fire Engineers New Zealand executive director Scott Lanauze said.

He sympathised with McInnes, as her plight was the result of longstanding legislative shortcomings. ‘‘The Building Act doesn’t require equitable access – it assumes people can use the stairs.’’

That was bad for parents with prams, and wheelchair users