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.
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.
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.