Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Cabinet Member for Transport and Infrastructure at Herefordshire Council could learn from my experiences of using the pavement network in the county as a wheelchair user.
As many of you, my readers and followers will know I met with Councillor, Philip Price, the Cabinet Member for Transport & Infrastructure at the local authority last month.
I wanted to share my story from the last four years with him in the hope that the new administration could learn from the mistakes made by the previous one.
I spoke about how I made change happen and why I felt that I had to involve the media in my campaign to make the council stand up and be counted.
If you would like a reminder of my successful campaign, then you can check out my specific blog about it here: https://just-being-cp.co.uk/2022/09/05/campaigning-for-what-you-believe-in-can-see-results/
Cllr Price promised that he would find out why his officers hadn’t responded to the governments letter that they received 143 days ago on the 20th of March this year.
He also asked if I could support Herefordshire Council by reporting any issues with our payment network, as and when I see them so that they can be reported and fixed in a timely manner.
I am also hoping that my campaign will have an effect on other local authorities within the West Midlands, and they will put the state of there pavement network at the forefront of what they do
I have written to most of the authorities across our region in an attempt to urge them to look at the state of their pavement network as it could be causing harm to the disabled residents of there counties.
The council leaders who responded to my letter all said that there authority does monitor the pavement network under their control and put money into repairs as and when needed.
I am however yet to see any evidence of this because I have recently visited Birmingham and found pavements that need to be both assessed and repaired so that they are safe to be used by wheelchair and mobility scooter users.
I would again like to urge all council leaders in the West Midlands to listen to their disabled residents and act on what they are telling you in relation to the state of your pavement networks.
I have also finally realised that Herefordshire Council is an example of best practice when it comes to listening to their disabled community, even if it did take four years for them to do this.
Herefordshire Council spent upwards of £50,000 on creating 16 pairs of dropped curbs on Harrow Road and Plough Lane in the city of Hereford last summer.
The creation of these new curbs will ensure that our community is safe and that we don’t need to use the roads as our pavement network when travelling around the city independently.
I know that this is a very short blog, and on a subject that I have written about so many times before, but I feel that Herefordshire Council are finally learning from my experiences and that is worth celebrating at the very highest level
If you would like to receive my blogs, direct your inbox once they’ve been published, then you can subscribe here: https://just-being-cp.co.uk/
I would like to end in my normal way by taking this opportunity to thank all of you, my readers and followers for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read my latest blog.
Cam
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