4Access Fund
The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on productions to anticipate the likely needs of Disabled workers and make reasonable adjustments. Reasonable adjustments are considered workable solutions that are reasonable in the circumstances, to ensure that Disabled people feel comfortable and included, and are able to perform and contribute to their best. At Channel 4, we apply this principle to everyone involved in a production – cast, contributors, crew and creatives.
As a general rule, Access to Work should cover the cost of providing access and adjustments for an individual Disabled worker and the production company should pay for wider accessibility across the production.
As a TV Access Project (TAP) member, we are committed to funding necessary access costs on productions not covered by Access to Work, over and above the production budget.
At Channel 4, we do this via the 4Access Fund. The fund works in the following way:
1. Your Production Finance Manager also acts as your Access Funding Contact (AFC), a single point of contact with whom you can liaise regarding funding for access costs. PFM names and email address can be found here.
2. Your Commissioning Editor, supported by your PFM, will have a mandatory, meaningful conversation with you at the time of budgeting to scope the likely funding for access adjustments on each production. This needs to be acknowledged on the Ed Spec.
3. To enable visibility of the costs, all anticipated access-related costs should be split out from the main production budget. The details should be outlined in an Access Funding Request (AFR) which is then submitted to your PFM for approval at the same time as your budget.
4. Approved funding will be held in a specific contingency and cost reported at the end of production. We will ask you to use a standard template which will be provided by your PFM
5. If at any time additional funding is required during production and cannot be funded by another means, an additional Access Funding Request (AFR) can be submitted for approval. There is no limit to the number of AFRs you can submit across a production
6. Cash flow is agreed on an individual production basis. Where cash flow has been advanced in excess of the final spend, it will be deducted from the final production payment.
If you have any further questions, please discuss with your Commissioning Editor and Production Finance Manager.
*For any issues reaching this document please email your Production Finance Manager or our Disability Project Manager Nicole Steven (Nsteven@channel4.co.uk)