At the Customer and Corporate Services Scrutiny Management Committee meeting on Monday 7 November Tom Franklin addressed the issue of disabled access to the City Centre, saying:
I am speaking as chair of York Green Party. Recently the party discussed access to the City Centre and in particular access for disabled people.
We noted the advice from North Yorkshire police, but we note that the advice from the police does not contain any form of accessibility assessment, and therefore the advice provided is woefully incomplete.
We are not particularly concerned about the form of the barriers, and do not have the expertise to consider their design in detail. what is important is who can get through them and when.
Clearly, it is important to minimise the risk of a terrorist attack, but it is also essential that people are able to do what they want or need to do.
I want to welcome the positive actions to improve disabled access into and around the city centre set out in the paper – but also to call for further action to look at how blue badge holders who rely on their vehicles to access the core shopping streets can do so during footstreets hours.
It’s welcome that the actions set out in the paper are now starting to progress. These will bring long overdue improvements to city centre access for many disabled people. Changes to the pavement café guidance are very rightly being made a priority, as is the increase in drop kerbs. It would be good to see other measures such as improved seating and the extension of Shopmobility visible on the ground as soon as possible.
It is great that a consultant has been appointed to progress a city centre shuttle bus but we do need to get on with seeing some actual trials of shuttle buses.
To be clear we do not have a problem with restriction of most movements during the day and evening.
BUT there are disabled people who are simply unable to walk or wheel any considerable distance (many blue badge holders simply cannot travel 50 metres), and they need to be able to get close to where they need to be. Many of the major places are a considerable distance from the nearest parking points – the post office is about 300 metres from the nearest parking space! The banks are about 250 metres and so on.
This is unacceptable. And, whilst we welcome the mitigations discussed above these do not address the issue for a significant number of people.
We believe that the Council must, in order to meet its legal obligations under the Equalities Act and because it is morally right, ensure that disabled people can access the city centre. This means developing a policy and procedure to enable blue badge holders to access, and park in the city centre.
The council has already had detailed advice from many people including the Higgitt report the Civic Trust.
We need to ensure that appropriate access for blue badge holders is provided alongside the other measures being taken
