Disabled-access building duties move from labour code to housing code

Workplace accessibility for disabled workers has moved house: the Code du travail provisions that bound employers and maîtres d'ouvrage building or fitting out workplaces have been repealed and re-created in the Code de la construction et de l'habitation. The Code du travail's Section 5 on accessibility of workplaces to disabled workers (articles R4214-26 to R4214-28) — access to new-build workplaces including annexes whatever the type of disability, design of accesses, doors, clearances and lifts serving workstations, and the ministerial order setting technical application rules — disappears from the labour code, as does article R4217-2Legifrance on accessible toilets (one adapted WC and washbasin where ten WCs are built, or a design allowing simple later works where fewer than ten are built).

The repeal is not a deregulation. Décret n° 2025-1342 du 26 décembre 2025, which fixes the accessibility rules for the construction of new professional-use buildings, created articles R162-14 and R162-15 of the Code de la construction et de l'habitationLegifrance and provides that, from its 1 April 2026 entry into force, the labour-code section and article R4217-2 are abrogated — except for the new parts of existing buildings, which stay under the old labour-code rulesLegifrance. New professional-use buildings must now be designed, fitted out and equipped to be accessible to all within the meaning of article L. 111-1Legifrance, and to let the employer meet articles R. 4225-6 to R. 4225-8 du code du travail. The duty covers the surroundings and common parts (including some parking, outdoor circulation, building accesses and exits, indoor vertical and horizontal circulation), work premises and annexes (sanitary, catering and rest rooms), and workstations — though workstations may be exempted provided later fitting-out can bring them into compliance.

The technical detail moves too: the ministers for construction, labour, disabled persons and agriculture set the minimum technical characteristics by arrêté, which may vary with each building's use, and that order may let the maître d'ouvrage meet the duties through equivalent accessibility solutions meeting the same objectives, with transitional provisions. Employers and project owners with new-build programmes should therefore stop citing the repealed labour-code articles and track the construction-code arrêté for the applicable technical specifications; the old rules survive only for the new parts of existing buildingsLegifrance.

Legal basis: décret n° 2025-1342 du 26 décembre 2025, articles 1 and 2; Code de la construction et de l'habitation, articles R162-14 and R162-15; former Code du travail, Section 5 (articles R4214-26 to R4214-28) and article R4217-2.