‘What about Blue Badge holders in all the other Islington LTNs?’

• GOOD news for disabled drivers (Blue Badge holders) living in the Highbury low traffic neighbourhood area that they can now use ANPR, automatic number plate recognition, to drive through the otherwise blocked roads, (LTN roads: blue badge drivers get pass in Highbury, December 3).

But why has this privilege not been granted to Blue Badge holders in all the other Islington LTNs?

I live in the Amwell Street LTN, where the camera-enforced road restrictions were installed with little notice in October 2020, forcing me into long and hazardous detours to reach shops only a couple of hundred metres away from my home.

Aided by the Equality and Advisory Support Service (EASS), we pointed out to the council that this constituted indirect discrimination against disabled people and was expressly against the transport secretary’s own directive.

We suggested that the use of ANPR would mitigate this discrimination without impairing the stated intent of the LTN schemes. The then leader of Islington Council, Richard Watts, brusquely brushed aside both the EASS and me.

Now, at last, they seem to have grudgingly realised the errors of their ways; after six other London councils including neighbouring Hackney.

But what’s helpful to disabled drivers in Highbury’s LTN should surely be provided for the rest of us Islington Blue Badge holders?

It is unjust to aid the last and ignore the first. Those of us who have experienced difficulties in an early LTN like Amwell deserve ANPR relief at least as soon as Highbury.

STEVEN ROSE, WC1