Thousands of blue badge holders with limited mobility will have less access to vital services and face more stress and extra costs if the council’s cabinet approves turning the western end of Western Road into a red route this week.
At the moment, people with disabilities are able to park along that stretch of Western Road – and the double yellow lines mean that others can load and unload along much of the road as well drop people off and pick them up.
The council said that there was persistent nuisance parking along Western Road and turning it into a red route would mean that it could use cameras for enforcement – to issue parking tickets.
People with disabilities and their representative groups met Brighton and Hove City Council officials during the consultation process, it has emerged, but did not believe that a red route was the answer.
Officials were told: “The benefits for the majority of residents around bus times and less obstructions are coming at the expense of access for disabled people. Policy intentions may be good but the impact is exclusion.”
More than 13,000 people are blue badge holders in Brighton and Hove and many more shop here from the surrounding towns and villages.
A submission to the council said: “A wide range of mobility-disabled people, many not wheelchair users, explained the practical and essential role private vehicles play in their daily lives.”
One said: “A car is not a luxury – it’s my mobility aid.”
Another said: “I can’t leave home without significant help and need door-to-door transport.”
And another said: “Being ‘dropped off’ even a short distance away is not an option.”
The existing red routes eliminated access to essential services such as opticians, GPs and community facilities, the council was told.
One disabled person said: “Western Road red route will block access to my newly found optician … It repeats the earlier loss from London Road red route.”
Another said: “Loading bays and scattered blue badge bays are not viable if you can’t move safely outside the car.”
Officials were told that the loss of accessibility took an emotional, physical and financial toll, with one disabled person saying: “Every ‘lost’ service means restarting the exhausting, demoralising process of finding a new one.”
Officials were also told: “My appointment costs have increased. It’s £90+ just for two PAs and a vehicle. That doesn’t include the actual appointment. These barriers cause emotional distress, isolation and loss of dignity.”
Community organisations echoed the concerns expressed by individuals with disabilities.
Speak Out Brighton and Hove said: ““Our members find it very difficult to navigate pavements when there are spill-outs from pubs or parked cars. They feel intimidated asking people to move.”
Southdown said: “Parking has become more challenging due to red lines and cycle lanes. Clients and staff with blue badges have received tickets.”
The meeting was told that, on one of the existing red routes, a disabled person without a blue badge “was fined for taking too long to get back to an unspecified-timed loading bay”.
Officials were also told: “If fined, it’s difficult to apply for the ‘money back’. Disabled people often give up.”
Disabled people expressed concerns that they need to do additional administration to dispute a penalty notice or make a complaint.
One said: “I’m exhausted by needing to deal with the paperwork that is related to managing the letter when it comes.”
Others highlighted wider issues, with one saying: “There are no local strategies for car-dependent mobility needs (and) no data on how mobility-impaired people move about the city. Road changes block vehicle access and push us into further isolation.”
The organisers pleaded for leadership and inclusion from the council, saying: “Stop deprioritising accessibility when it conflicts with other policy goals.
“Brighton and Hove is supposed to be an accessible city. Councils are legally required to reduce stigma, not contribute to it.”
Participants said that they were poorly informed about timelines and that their feedback seemed to go unheard or did not appear to be meaningfully considered.
One said: “As a disabled person … we never get to know about timescales.”
Another said: “Complaints go unrecognised, counted only as feedback. We’re forced to engage with inaccessible systems.”
Many reported a sense of isolation and distrust, with one saying: “There’s minimal engagement with severely mobility-disabled residents.”
The meeting with council officials was organised by the Possability People and BADGE Disabled Car User Advisory Group, with input from others groups.
At a separate meeting of traders and residents last week, one speaker urged the council to enforce the existing yellow lines more rigorously despite the challenges.
Unlike more modern shopping streets, the premises have no rear access for deliveries coming in or going out. They said that a red route would drive them out of business.
The council has denied that it was bringing in red routes to raise revenue, saying that they would improve road safety and air quality, tackle problem parking and bus speed journey times.
A decision is due to be made by the council’s cabinet in a meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (17 September) at 10.30am.
As a one-time carer, still regularly called upon to drive elderly family members with blue badges to medical appointments and shops and cafes when they can no longer drive themselves, I fully endorse all the points made in this article. There are fewer and fewer places to take them where we can park outside that isn’t an out of town garden centre or supermarket and when they want to remain a part of local life and the local community, using local hairdressers, opticians, banks, chemists and dentists. Buses are not suitable for everyone and can stop suddenly, flinging passengers around inside, sometimes just because the driver is less considerate than his colleagues. My aunt once fell down the stairs with her fully laden shopping bags when a bus stopped suddenly and broke her wrist. Needless to say she has avoided buses ever since. Buses are not great for those with brittle bones or arthritis either as there is the constant fear of being knocked into by those usually staring into their phones as they blunder along. The healthy among us never have to consider all these pitfalls to staying independent, but for an elderly person with disabilities, every day is like climbing a mountain already. They don’t need Brighton and Hove City Council to start fining them for trying to live a normal life. And nor do their, often unpaid, carers. Forget Red Routes, we need to get rid of double yellow lines and have short term parking bays like a parade of shops should have.
Passengers get flung around the busses usually because of inconsiderate drivers of cars, selfish parking or people walking in the road to get past the blocked pavements, especially along this stretch of Western Road.
Well James, to be that guy – why was she standing on the top floor of the bus whilst it was in motion? And “fully laden” with shopping bags?
If your arnt was a blue badge holder why were they on the top deck walking around when the bus was in motion.
Load of nonsense from lets face it a bunch of baby boomers who love to moan about the slightest of inconvenience. I was stuck on a bus the other day for 10 mins when a blue badge holder decided to park illegally on the corner of Oxford place, the police had to go into the doctors and get her to move… I have zero sympathy for people who think something is their right when it affects negativity so many other people. The scheme allows for disabled people tombe dropped off and the car then parked in a disabled bay, so the who argument is invalid.
Western road is a joke, people park anywhere and everywhere and not many blue badge holders use the shops here.
I drive my mother to her optician, her chemist and, when she is having a good week, to a coffee on Western Road. She cannot walk from a bay further along the road and back again. She can manage the few steps from the car to a door and that is genuinely the limit of it. The article puts the number of blue badge holders in this city at more than 13,000. Many of them has somebody like me arranging the day around where the car can legally stop. Take that away and she does not switch to the bus. She stops going out. I do not think anyone intends that outcome, but it is the outcome, and intention is not much comfort when your mother is sitting at home instead.
Other coffee shops are available, in pretty much every single street in Brighton and Hove. And you can still stop outside to unload with a blue badge in red zones FYI. You just can’t park there and block the road…
There should be be an IQ test for all council officials. a council’s responsibility is to improve the life of residents not to make it worse
A lot of Senior Council Officers have left or taken early retirement from the council in the past few years and it shows. A lot of intelligence and experience is now missing and we are seeing more and more cluelessness at the top about how to do things and how to run things, with the result there are more and more blunders costing money and human suffering to residents and businesses. Decent and sensible people need to consider standing as Councillor candidates in the May 2027 local elections or nothing will improve, preferably with no agenda other than to fix the city and make it thrive again.
The council’s own cabinet report this week says something different than their public press release quoted above.
This accepts that Western Road is not like the existing red route corridors. It also accepts that collision data “does not identify incidents specifically attributable to vehicles loading or stopping at the kerbside”. That is the council’s own wording, about the very problem the scheme is meant to solve. The report lists air quality as an uncertainty rather than a benefit. The council also did no economic impact study.
On revenue, a council committee approved £770,000 of enforcement staffing in July 2021, funded from expected red route income. And a freedom of information response shows that around seven in ten of the city’s camera fines last year came from three red route corridors. Draw your own conclusions…
Does anyone else see a lot of similarly worded comments on here? Anyone would think that there is a concerted campaign pulling the strings and sending out crib notes.
What you mean like a little bunch of people sitting in a back office at the council working for Trevor Muten repeating clean air and safer streets quotes all the time hoping we believe it if they keep on repeating the same facts all the time even though they have been discounted. Or what is the other one they used to go on about all the time having some mobile phone ping data that proved red routes were an economic success that also had to get binned. I suppose its possible. Perhaps you could put in an FOI and tell us the answer.
Not enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with Benjamin tonight, Ann?
Can’t get near any of the restaurants in Brunswick because of all the cars parked illegally James! lol
James, look, I’m flattered, but I don’t swing that way for just anyone. And jealously is a bad look, lol!
Those clowns parking anywhere they feel like don’t recognise legitimate parking bays or double yellow lines, have a wander along there. Red lines they might understand but only after several tickets, and only then after arguing and intimidating the parking officer, assaulting them happens as well.
Unpaid carer here for 8 years looking after my father until he sadly passed on three weeks ago. He was living with, first, vascular dementia and then later Alzeimers and for the last three years his mobility was severely challenged.
He still enjoyed a car trip from his care home to the shops with me-a proper day out- but, because of his limited mobility, it would be 10-15 minutes to ease him gently into his car seat and 10-15 minutes to park by his favourite shop and to help him out of the car or, if he was not feeling up to it, leaving him in the car so he could at least watch me go and shop for him.
So parking the car in some distant bay on a Red Route road not facing his favourite shop would not be an option for my Dad’s final three years.
For practical as well as emotional reasons.
And to park on the Double Red lines would be an automatic fine with the inhuman, Big Brother cameras there.
Not great for carers like I was, nor the loved ones they cared for.
Nor a great look for a so-called ‘caring’ Council.
Surely we would be forgiven for thinking people like my father had suffered enough with their disabilities without a Red Route road depriving them of a shopping trip out of their care home, or other place of residence, where their carers and loved ones are trying to give them as much quality and dignity of life as possible?
My message for those here disregarding the challenges on Red Route roads for people with disabilties or their carers: let them walk in my shoes for a few days.
And they may view the proposed- or, by the looks of things, Labour Council IMposed -Western Road Red Route a little differently.
At the risk of repeating myself, kindly, like many others, that’s a good argument for ensuring there are appropriate bays, not the Red Route itself. There are also exemptions for BB on RR, although I appreciate the practicalities of that is you might need a second person, if the individual needs constant supervision whilst the driver parks up lawfully after a drop-off.
My Mum had a blue badge. It meant that in the last 4 years of her life she could enjoy as much independence as possible. She had vascular problems in her legs along with a range of other conditions and walking long distances simply wasn’t an option. Having a car was the only way she could simply go out and it was the passport between her staying in the house or being forced to remain inside. Her balance was not good and going on what might be a moving bus or hanging around at a bus stop or getting to a bus stop simply was not possible for her for a range of reasons. A blue badge meant she could still go out on her own and times and at times when she was with us we had freedom to explore far more places. What you quickly realise Is so much of the city has become totally inaccessible. Churchill Square, North St, St James St, Lewes Rd, London Rd. Much of the Seafront due to one new road scheme or the other over the last ten years. Without this freedom she simply wouldn’t have been able to go out. People that make comments such as red routes stop anti-social parking or they should catch a bus either do not understand the realities of being disabled or completely lack empathy. It really does make me sad that council transport planning departments these days simply do not seem to consider the elderly and the disabled in this new schemes in the way they used to in the past.
Like many others, that’s a good argument for ensuring there are appropriate bays, not Red Routes.
I used to work in a place on Western Road, right where the red route is going. The boss and his mates would always park for hours there, day in and day out no one ever got a ticket.
I see the same cars parked in the area every day, and when I walk, cycle or I’m driving down that road it’s always a mess.
Something needs to be done.
Maybe parking cameras and immediate fines, maybe a revised red route, but it can’t go on, the state of the road surface and all the broken paving slabs from parked cars on the pavement is terrible.
That’s why we have parking enforcement officers. Punishing customers who want to use the shops and disabled residents who have increasingly few places to use their Blue Badges is not the answer. I am sure most people capable of walking or getting the bus already do so. What are out of town visitors supposed to do who just want to enjoy a day or afternoon in Hove though? They don’t all have public transport links and this is supposed to be a tourist resort, ffs!
Hove has some of the best transport links in the whole city, what are you on about?
Hove might have good public transport, but our visitors come from all over the country and beyond, as well you know! Most areas outside BH don’t have great public transport. Or any at all considering how many rural bus services have been axed. Are thousands of visitors to be denied access to this tourist resort? Or punished and penalised for trying to drive here, park here and spend their money here? All because it doesn’t suit Benjamin Bubble?
Considering the tourist and hotel figures being extremely positive, the data says no.
BHCC consider the disabled to be an inconvenience.
They’re only interested in cycling and ‘active travel”
Does the Council include e-bikes as ‘active travel’?
With a local election looming, if our council had any sense it would be pulling all the stops to provide disabled provision in this city as is their legal and moral duty to, if only for the optics. They’ve lost the disabled vote (around 12% of residents) if they carry on discriminating and designing them out and closing disabled toilets, aka Madeira Drive.
So, by your admission, they aren’t being performative for an upcoming election. Sounds like the definition of integrity.
They are aren’t committing to the manifesto pledges on which we gave them the mandate to govern on for their current term either or can you point me to their policy said they were going to paint red routes through shopping centres to disadvantage, carers the disabled and elderly. I’m struggling to find this section…
I was basing this opinion on how the Labour administration obviously couldn’t give a damn about residents until it’s time to go door knocking, cap-in-hand, begging for their vote again. Moreover, they are so out of touch everything they announce as supposedly ‘good news’ just leads to more angry residents because it is usually yet another Emperor’s new clothes of public purse money wasting for no real benefit while the city carries on turning into a drug and graffiti ghetto with an ever increasing number of closed businesses and a rusting away sea front.
I think you are conflating us vocal minority with the opinion of the populace at large.
The council”s collective brain seizes up on anything involving transport and responds to constructive input illogically and without respecting its stated policies, it has been thus for 20 years.
If this scheme is that bad, you can ask for a “judicial review” which in a caring city you should find can be crowd-funded … and then the council will have to reverse its decision, pay your costs and then funds you have raised can be passed to other worthy causes (if you phrase the crowd-fund to permit this).
Rob. For residents to have to resort to Judicial Review on a regular basis to have council wrongs righted, and at taxpayer’s expense ultimately – as the council will obviously pass the cost of losing onto taxpayers – is the mark of a truly corrupt and appalling council – one whose senior officers and councillors should surely face charges of Misconduct in Public Office for acting against the electorate they are supposed to be in post to serve. BHCC were already taken to JR for the previous Western Road “improvements” which wrecked so many roads and cellars with heavy vehicle weight limits breached around Montpellier, (the repair costs of which BHCC still won’t publicly reveal!) so you would have thought BHCC might have learned a few lessons from the previous Western Road disaster, but obviously not.
Neither the residents nor any council worth its salt should have to resort to a Judicial Review if said council is conducting itself properly and in accordance with its legal and moral obligations.
If residents are “losing” so much in Judicial Reviews, is that not a sign that the public are being misinformed of the law by those who would advocate for them?
I meant that when residents WIN a Judicial Review, the council will re-coup their financial losses through council tax rises!
Well, they don’t…what happens is there is less money for the things that we actually want. Like there is less money for repairs, less money for potholes, less money for services. There’s no tax reaction to winning a judicial review, that’s nonsense.
The councillors proposing this have obviously never cared for disabled people. If you have been a carer, as I was for my father, you know that every single meter you have to move them is a challenge. Life is hard enough for carers already with all the obstacles you find in your way and I suffered severe pains in my joints from all the “wheelchair work”.
Carers and the disabled don’t need any more obstacles in their way. This solution to illegal parking is an over the top measure which will add to the misery of getting even simple things done.
Try to be thoughtful council and come up with appropriate measured solutions, not over the top excessive ones.
Like many others, that’s a good argument for ensuring there are appropriate bays, specifically.
BHCC is the most disabled-unfriendly council in this country. They assume everyone is young, fit ambulatory, can walk and ride a bike. Soooooooooooooo out of touch with the reality of this population. There is NOT a persistent nuisance parking along Western Road. This is a lie. Sometimes there are 6-8 cars with blue badges parked on that stretch… they are entitled to be there. There is no provision for disabled parking anywhere along the Red Route. Shame on this council
It seems very strange that these Labour councillors have taken it upon themselves to do their utmost not to be re-elected, by ramming through this red route proposition without proper consultation, they’ve shown they absolutely don’t care about disabled people, if they did, they would have properly consulted the community in the first instance and then realised on balance it was a very bad idea, primarily because many disabled people going forward wont be able to venture out to visit their local independent shops, because they simply will not be able to get their once the red route’s introduced; which again is very odd from a political point of view as many of us are, sorry, were staunch labour voters. It appears this Labour council has also shown they absolutely don’t care about the small independent shops along this route too, again many of whom I’m certain would have once been the backbone of their vote, but now face the very real risk of closure due to fewer customers. Which begs the question what does this labour council actually stand for today? It very much seems not for the many who elected them in in the first place. Of course the simple solution to many of the problems highlighted in the other comments, would be to properly enforce the current road regulations in place, not to punish the disabled through the imposition of this red route. Yours disgruntled, x labour disabled voter.
There is no need for a Red Route here. There are a few problem drivers who abuse the parking rules. They can and should be dealt with under the current rules. It just requires a willingness to act. Many people commenting here seem unaware that it’s perfectly legal to drop someone off or pick them up on double yellow lines, and to load or unload, unless there are markings on the kerb and a plate spelling out the restrictions. Part of Western Road is also currently regulated by single yellow lines. The red lines are completely unnecessary and amount to a money-raising ploy. It will hurt the disabled, as well as traders and delivery drivers. If this happens, Labour are going to regret it.
Top Tip: simply tow a caravan behind an untaxed and uninsured vehicle (4×4 or Ford Transit van) and park wherever you want – highways, parks, or other public spaces – in Brighton & Hove FOR FREE.
I know where you’re going with that, it’s not significant enough to be classified as that, and could land you in further trouble if you were trying to do that for the purposes of evasion of law.
As I have said on TV, to the newspapers & on line – all that is needed is enforcement. And that means traffic wardens passing by every 15 minutes. Job done.
But no – we are in the dying days of a Labour Administration haemorrhaging votes & councillors.
8 councillors left Labour forcing elections, 2 jumped to be Independents & 1 gone to the Greens. Elections next year will no doubt lead to Labour losing their majority. So, trying to appease to Green voters by hating vehicles is a vote winner ‘in their eyes’.
Meanwhile this is a dangerous precedent from the administration in trying to impose red double lines on a non A-road.
Well said that man. This is about Labour pretending to be even more environMENTAL than the Greens to steal their votes, but also about extorting ever more profit out of normal people trying to live normal daily lives. They are at war with normal people who they expect will be mugs enough to vote for them no matter what they do to them. Labour are rather like an abuser pretending they’ll change if their victim gives them one last chance.
To be honest, Labour have been doing far more for the environment than the Greens in recent years, ironically.
And it’s not a monopoly.
The Transport department is not short of money. Indeed there was a surplus of some £23m last year. There are so many other areas for better transport projects, improvements & maintenance that the excess could be spent within our city – rather than red double lines, that not even the bus service has come out & said is needed! The taxi companies are against – it is a blatant waste of money
And any decent councillor would know that the issue the transport department was having was finding enough contractors to do work, which was the limiting factor, and reported on here.
You’re really bad at misrepresenting easily checked facts, Councillor. I’m disappointed you’re using whataboutism as an argument to not do something. I expect better from my representatives on the council.
Still better than Tories.
Oh look, it’s Cllr. Lyons trying to play politics.
And in typical Conservative fashion, he thinks just throwing money at the situation will make things better. Somehow thinking it makes good financial sense for a warden to patrol one road, out of the hundreds, four times an hour, for 12 hours a day, forsaking all others.
Then he’ll complain about the council having to make savings. You simply can’t take him seriously.
It’s little wonder that his party has wasted an eye watering £131,209,116,062.00 in the last four years before their extinction event, if that’s the quality of Ward Councillor he aspires to.
https://bestforbritain.org/publication/scandalous_spending_tracker/
At least Councillor Lyons ia real Councillor. I think you’ll find it’s Labour who have a reputation for squandering public money and driving councils broke.
Yes James, Lyons is a real councillor. Gold star. Also, the sky is blue. You’ll find, Conservatives has £131,209,116,062.00 of squandering public money and driving councils broke, in a listed item form, such as £120,000,000 for the Festival of Brexit, and Conservative Failure so bad, it’s estimated to have lost the country £140,000,000,000 billion to date.
So no James, reality is Conservatives have done more economic harm to this country with their ineptitude than any other party, and why they have become such a minor party, bleeding members to Reform of all places…
What is this mythical dangerous precedent you keep peddling. You are not Trump who thinks if he says something often enough, it must be true! Or are you just as deluded?
In this Labour administration it is Bella who knocks her heels together three times to take her to Kansas or whatever part of America she wants to re-imagine Brighton and Hove as next. ‘Deluded’ is the word. She and Trump would make a good pair.
It’s come to our attention there’s been a significant amount of sockpuppeting on this thread. We have identified that comments by the following posters have all been posted by the same person:
Jayne
Alison Starfish
Kate
catherine
Peter F