Not just temporary ramps, but temporary ramps they want the stallholders to put up and take down when they see us coming. It's such a blatant liability issue.
The thing with Sue is she's one of these people with boundless campaigning energy. On top of a full time civil service job, she's got a hate crime reporting project launching at the start of next week (local centres so people don't need to go to the police). Then there's all the disability education work she does with the police. And all that pales beside the stuff she does at a national level on rail accessibility. As part of which the committee she sits on just took a look (at her instigation) at the council's fully developed plans for the redevelopment of Chatham Train Station (which is an accessibility nightmare) and told them to go away and start again. Highlights she mentioned to me: a proposed drop off area for disabled people arriving by car or taxi that didn't actually have enough room to deploy a ramp.... So probably not the council's favorite person right now ;)
Just in passing she laid into the councillor on parking at Rochester Station, which is brand new, and fully accessible, but was designed without any passenger drop-off area, so people use the disabled parking as a drop-off instead as that's the closest point. She was actually throwing stats at him on how many parking fines had been issued and for what.
And I nobbled him on Costa Coffee when we passed it, on how on earth they got permission from the planning committee to leave a 6" step at the entrance when they gutted the rest of the building, meaning it was legally required to have been brought up to modern access standards.
ETA And at least one councillor now understands that cobbled, steep, driveways cannot be considered to be kerb cuts, and that actual disabled people consider Rochester High Street an accessibility nightmare because of the paving and steet furniture. I mean, what kind of an idiot puts a grating at the bottom of a kerb cut (twice) or a signpost at the top? And both Sue and I looked at the kerb cut opposite the signpost and said "Nope, not even trying that one" (too steep and unevenly pitched). Pointing out that Wheelchair Services actually changed my prescription to say larger front casters when I said I'd be using it on the High Street was a particularly effective point ;)
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The thing with Sue is she's one of these people with boundless campaigning energy. On top of a full time civil service job, she's got a hate crime reporting project launching at the start of next week (local centres so people don't need to go to the police). Then there's all the disability education work she does with the police. And all that pales beside the stuff she does at a national level on rail accessibility. As part of which the committee she sits on just took a look (at her instigation) at the council's fully developed plans for the redevelopment of Chatham Train Station (which is an accessibility nightmare) and told them to go away and start again. Highlights she mentioned to me: a proposed drop off area for disabled people arriving by car or taxi that didn't actually have enough room to deploy a ramp.... So probably not the council's favorite person right now ;)
Just in passing she laid into the councillor on parking at Rochester Station, which is brand new, and fully accessible, but was designed without any passenger drop-off area, so people use the disabled parking as a drop-off instead as that's the closest point. She was actually throwing stats at him on how many parking fines had been issued and for what.
And I nobbled him on Costa Coffee when we passed it, on how on earth they got permission from the planning committee to leave a 6" step at the entrance when they gutted the rest of the building, meaning it was legally required to have been brought up to modern access standards.
ETA And at least one councillor now understands that cobbled, steep, driveways cannot be considered to be kerb cuts, and that actual disabled people consider Rochester High Street an accessibility nightmare because of the paving and steet furniture. I mean, what kind of an idiot puts a grating at the bottom of a kerb cut (twice) or a signpost at the top? And both Sue and I looked at the kerb cut opposite the signpost and said "Nope, not even trying that one" (too steep and unevenly pitched). Pointing out that Wheelchair Services actually changed my prescription to say larger front casters when I said I'd be using it on the High Street was a particularly effective point ;)