Vital new facilities at Sheffield’s huge city centre food hall have been hailed as a ‘game changer’.

The Changing Places toilet at the Cambridge Street Collective food hall was officially opened on Friday, July 19.

Changing Places toilets are required by more than 250,000 people across the UK with severe disabilities.

But this is just the fifth to open in Sheffield city centre, according to the Changing Places website, with the others being at Sheffield Town Hall, the Moor Market, the Crucible Theatre, and Sheffield Hallam University’s main city campus building.

The facilities at Cambridge Street Collective include a hoist, a height-adjustable changing bench and basin, and a shower, among other equipment.

Crucially, the toilet will be open not just to those eating and drinking at the food hall but to anyone visiting the city centre.

Given the food hall is open from 8am to 11pm Monday-Thursday, until 1am on Friday and Saturday night, and until 10.30pm on Sundays, it will make a night out in the city more accessible to many people.

Among those people is Jack Tully, who was visiting the food hall with Rachael Middleton, from Fairplay, a charity providing accessible activities for young people with disabilities.

Asked what having a Changing Places toilet there meant to them, Rachael said: “For most of us at Fairplay it just means you can do everything that everyone else can do and there’s accessibility for everyone.

“For Jack, if he didn’t have a Changing Places facility, we can’t come out for the full day. We would have to go back to the centre.

“For people like Jack and his friends, it means they can go out for a full day.”

Gillian Scotford is director of AccessibleUK, which works to improve accessible for people with disabilities across the country.

She knows the challenges so many people face as two of her sons were born with disabilities - Sam, who has autism and learning difficulties, and Thomas, who sustained severe brain damage as a baby and sadly died aged 21 in 2017.

She said: “Throughout my life I’ve thought they put men on the moon but there are so many places we can’t get into as a family because they’re not accessible.

“We need more Changing Places toilets and it’s fantastic to have another one in the city centre so people can come here and move around with freedom.”

Gillian also set up Access MiniGuide to help open up visitor attractions to more people, including around 16 million in the UK with disabilites.

The guides provide crucial information about accessibility at buildings and venues like Cambridge Street Collective around the country.

They tell you not just whether those places have accessible toilets and easy level access, but whether they are dog friendly, what the baby changing facilities are like and how well they cater for different dietary requirements, for example.

Andy Woolley, head of food hall operations for Blend Family, which runs Cambridge Street Collective, said: “It’s really important to us that we’re accessible to everyone in the community, and opening the Changing Places toilet here is a big step towards that.

“It could be a game changer for many people, and we want to let them know it’s there for them to use if they need it.”