MSer challenges local council to help those with mobility issues

Amy Silverton is on a mission. She wants to tackle troublesome and dangerous pavements for people using mobility aids, and raise awareness over tricky wheelchair access on buses, and she’s taking it to the top.

She’s hoping to influence areas of local governance more widely around the UK, too.

I have secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and in a few short years went from cycling everywhere on an ordinary bike, to using an electric bike, then a Travelscoot mobility buggy, then to an electric wheelchair.

Local authorities make much of improving roads for the benefit of car drivers and cyclists, but you never hear anything about the pavements used by people with walking sticks and various mobility aids.

Recently, my carer and I took one of my ward councillors on a route I do frequently in my power wheelchair, from Dartmouth Park, where I live in London, down Highgate Road towards Kentish Town.

He was either pushing my spare manual wheelchair or being pushed by my carer, so he could experience some of the treacherously steep dropped curbs, those with double slopes, both up/down and sideways, and to encounter insurmountable barriers that prevent wheelchair users going along a public footpath, or into a patch of public garden.

He was astounded, terrified and completely stuck, unable to move. He had no idea what it is like to travel in a wheelchair.

He agreed with my suggestion that the highways department, who are responsible for pavements as well as roads, should have a wheelchair so the people designing footpaths and dropped curbs, who fulfil the stated or regulation criteria, could try them out in practice. I believe this should be mandatory.

He also had no idea that both the old and new design of London buses do not work for disabled people.

There are instructions on the bus saying people in wheelchairs should sit facing the rear of the bus. The only problem is the blue button advising the bus driver to stop and put out a the ramp is positioned about six inches behind your right shoulder, totally out of reach.

The only option is to get someone else on the bus to ring it for you or, if there is no one else within reach, to shout very loudly so the driver can hear.

I had an email from him the next day saying he had already been on to the highways department about some of the issues raised by his wheelchair excursion.

I would love other MS–UK members to do the same, and contact their local ward councillors. I don’t suppose many of them are disabled themselves or have any experience of what it is like to be disabled and using the footpaths rather than the roads.

I titled my email, ‘If you would really like my vote’ and it definitely caught their attention. With the local elections looming, all councillors are after every vote they can get.

Helpline and Information Officer, Shaun Barton, provided Amy with some helpful advice.

‘Contacting your local councillor or MP is one way to start the conversation, and so is contacting a local disability rights/action group to see how they can help.

‘For example, in your locality there is Camden Disability Action (see https://camdendisabilityaction.org.uk/about-us/our-organisation/). Such organisations may be able to support people in raising awareness.

‘This may be helpful for those who do not have the confidence to go directly to the powers that be themselves.’