‘For some being in a car is painful, every extra minute brings more pain’

• I WELCOME the low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs); they offer an important means of fighting the climate crisis by reducing traffic and pollution.

To do this the street “space” has to be reconfigured – the most visible of the changes are the new cycle lanes, increasing the safety and numbers of cyclists.

Reconfiguring doesn’t come cheap; Islington received a £6million grant.

It is also extremely difficult to get right. It requires good data about the diversity of residents and our different way of getting around, or not. But the research the council commissioned doesn’t even use the words “disability” or “disabled”.

How can the corporate director of the environ­ment oversee planning without good data?

So I can’t agree with Keith Townsend’s claim that “Islington is working to create people-friendly streets that work for everyone including disabled residents. That’s why we’ve implemented low traffic neighbourhood trials to make residential streets quieter, safer, and more pleasant for people with walking aids, wheelchairs and mobility scooters”, (Creating healthier streets for all is our commitment, July 23). I can’t.

Missing from this list are cars – a critical mobility aid for some – including Islington’s 8,000 Blue Badge (BB) holders, whose need for this mobility aid has been carefully assessed by the council itself.

Islington’s own Equality Impact Assessment acknowledges that an LTN “disproportionately impacts on older and disabled as car journeys may take longer and be less convenient”.

But the council notes and dismisses this negative impact for all LTN car drivers. So what have they done for the protected BB holders? Well nothing.

Islington has refused the request that BB holders are given ANPR status, so that they, like emergency vehicles, can freely go through the street closures. They too have to take the long road.

For some being in a car is painful, every extra minute brings more pain. This is an a priori breach of the Disability Act as it indirectly discriminates against the BB holders as a “protected group”.

Fat lot of protection they got from the council and alas their chances of testing this in court are poor.

They aren’t a well organised and well funded group like the Black Cab taxi drivers who did have the resources to take the mayor to court over LTNs and demonstrate that even the mayor is not above the law.

That said, BB holders are often better off than others whose similar disabilities mean they, too, need car transport, but who neither have one nor access to one.

For them the mini-cab has been the answer. But the longer journeys caused by the LTN will obviously cost more and disabled people have modest incomes. For them the extra cost of getting to and from a hospital appointment could be a hard knock.

Islington is committed to equality yet here they will be intensifying inequality. But if the council’s research doesn’t give them the needed data about disabled people, how can they plan with appropriate sensitivity to different needs?

Disability is not a one-size-fits-all but includes people with many different conditions and needs.

The LTNs were installed at such high speed that it would have been a borderline miracle to have got them right. But the problem of too little time was not the fault of the councils, it was imposed on them by transport secretary Grant Shapps. His time frame, not theirs, made it impossible to develop LTNs sensitive to the diverse needs of the population.

PROFESSOR EMERITA
HILARY ROSE
Lloyd Square, WC1