Parking outside house

bemusedpuma

Hi,
So my partner is recently disabled (primary progressive MS) and has been awarded the highest levels of PiP and we are awaiting assessment for disabled facilities grant to build a wheelchair accessible downstairs space. We have planning permission for that.

My partner can walk short distances with help and his specialists say it is important for him to do this as long as he can.

Our property isn't immediately facing the road but is one away from the road on a footpath around a green. Our parking is 'non reserved' on the street. Lots of neighbours with road frontage have dropped their kerbs so parking is at a premium. There is one other disabled resident at the other end of the green who has a disabled bay marked for him.

However when we asked the council for marked bay at the closest point we were told 'there's no budget for this anymore'. The upshot was - they won't do it for free, they don't provide a service where we can pay to have it done *and* they won't allow us to have an approved contractor do it as it is the council's highway. Their parting shot was that it wasn't anyone's right to park near their property and these bays aren't enforceable anyway (although all our neighbours respect them).

We are about to spend everything we have and more to get our property fit to live in with a disability (and the council support that) but without access it all seems a bit pointless. We can't afford to move...

Any advice welcome!

Misscleo

You'd think in the 21st centry the council would paint bays for disabled people.
The council's ALL of them waste tons of money on doing nothing yet when it comes to disabled people the council do a type of disabled hate crime by treating disabled people like 3rd rate 

Julessarahthompson

My parents live in a culdisak of bungalows and there is one parking bay. They are all disabled access bungalows and the majority of them are occupied by people with mobility issues. There is literally nowhere for them to park and the council basically said the same about parking near their property isnt a right. Its nothing to do with right it's to do with ability and making life that little bit easier. There is a big bit of grass in the culdisak that the residents and even MPs have been fighting to get it changed to parking spaces but the council wont because of the cost. Residents are having to park on the grass which the council obviously disapproves off and its certainly not ideal for wheelchair users. It does make you laugh that in this day and age the council wont accommodate the needs of their residents 

wilko

Hello and welcome to the discussion, myself found myself three years ago in the same situation on contacting the local council I was informed that I would require an assessment on the feasibility of have a disability parking bay marked on the road near my residence and if granted there would be a cost of £400 to myself if approved and permission granted and would not be enforceable. On hearing this I bought my own signage and erected on some fencing adjacent where I wanted and needed to park. The cost £40 solid metal signs the same as the local disabled parking signage. I have also found out that disabled parking bays can be used by blue badge holders only if signage states this. 

Chloe_Scope

Welcome to the community @bemusedpuma! This sounds very frustrating, have you been able to get any further with this?

bemusedpuma

Thanks all for commenting. 

The area is grass surrounded by footpath - so nowhere for signage.

The council won’t even put me on a list to tell me if their policy changes (they don’t want evidence of how many citizens they are failing) so it seems like a dead end.

I’m considering getting some traffic cones with disabled signs on and using those (after a quick note to the neighbours) which is technically not right but the best I can think of in the circumstances.

If there was a proper solution but it cost money I would fundraise the amount somehow - but I just hit dead ends

April2018mom

Welcome @bemusedpuma! 

This is hard but all you can do is try again. What about contacting your local paper and selling your story as a human interest feature? I recently had the same issue as you when I contacted my local council to ask about parking bays.