Storage for mobility scooters in social housing...

Bacaloca

I don't know if this has been discussed before and apologies if it has. My partner and I both have mobility issues and now rely on mobility scooters for transport. We live in West Yorkshire in a small cup-de-sac of six bungalows, in the cut-de-sac are six garages. The garages were originally built to go with the bungalows, however, over the years they have been rented out to anybody on a first come first served basis. When we moved into our bungalow 2 years ago we put our name on the waiting list for one of the garages.( I will at this point say none of the garages are rented by any of the bungalow residents. ) There is room to park 4 cars at the back of the bungalows, 4 of them have cars. My partner had to stop driving because of medical reasons so we asked if we could stay on the waiting list for a garage to house the 2 mobility scooters. We were then informed that not only were mobility scooters not classed as vehicles but that they had no record of us being on the waiting list. T he housing association said we could apply for a scooter shed but it would have to be built to set recommendations, be a certain distance from the bungalow and made of metal. Then of course because we have communal gardens it would be denied. I just wondered if anybody else had as many problems with storage. We decided in the end to buy a motorbike tent which is classed as portable and that was how we got around the problem.

Thanks for letting me waffle 💜

66Mustang

Did they definitely say you had to put a vehicle in the garage??

I find this odd. I've got a bit of experience renting garages, including council garages, and at no point was it ever specified that I had to own a car or even use the garage for storing a vehicle…Most older garages are completely useless for a typical modern-sized car anyway!!

I'm not trying to doubt you but I think this was strange of them to do that

Bacaloca

They will not rent you a garage unless you have a log book for a vehicle, I took the log book in for the car we had but when I went in to ask about keeping the scooters in a garage they had suddenly lost the paperwork. Our council is very short of garages to rent out and only 2 of the 6 garages have cars in them the rest are used for storage that is what is so annoying about it.

Jimm_Scope

Have you thought about going to your local authority? I wonder if you've ever had a needs assessment done on your home? I imagine this would include adaptations to help you get out the house, which you need your mobility scooter for. I am not 100% on it admittedly, but it sounds like a possible avenue. They may also be able to make other recommendations to your house that they can help pay for.

See our advice page here https://www.scope.org.uk/advice-and-support/home-adaptations-occupational-therapist-assessments

Sorry if this is something you've already tried, but it's the first thing that comes to mind for me

Bacaloca

We have the usual adaptions inside the bungalow, wet room, grab rails, bannister rails, hoist etc… it's the outside we have problems with.