Discrimination against Blue Badge holders
Why is the Council continuing to discriminate against those who are frail, disabled or housebound by not allowing Blue Badge holders through the Dulwich Village junction?
After our meeting in June, we sent an email to Cllr McAsh on 4 July 2023, giving the history of all the reassurances the Council has given about allowing Blue Badge holders, SEND vehicles, emergency responders, GPs, nurses, midwives and carers through the Dulwich Village junction.
But Cllr McAsh (the Southwark cabinet member in charge of LTNs) has now gone back on these commitments.
Why this matters is that this junction is the only direct route from the eastern to the western side of Dulwich Village. Blocking it to vehicles 24/7 causes huge difficulties for those who are frail, disabled or housebound, and also for those who care for them.
Going the long way round in a car isn’t just inconvenient. For those with disabilities, longer journeys can be extremely stressful and painful.
In our email, we asked which groups of people need the junction to be closed 24/7, and why their needs take precedence over those of groups who are significantly disadvantaged by the 24/7 closure.
In his response of 24 August 2023, Cllr McAsh says, “No group ‘need’ the junction to be either closed or not closed to motor vehicles.” This dodges the question, as our emphasis was on “24/7” – that is, the junction being closed 24 hours a day, every day.
The Equality Act defines some groups of people as having “protected characteristics”, which include age (both youth and old age) and disability. As Cllr McAsh says elsewhere in his email, the interests of all groups with protected characteristics must be considered.
But we do not agree with him that the 24/7 closure achieves this.
If we, like Cllr McAsh, take schoolchildren as a group with a protected characteristic (because they are young), do they need 24/7 closure, or would a closure between 8am and 9am, and 3pm to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday – as happens elsewhere in Dulwich – be enough?
If we’re thinking of the safety of other groups with protected characteristics passing through the junction (for example pedestrians who are elderly, or people in wheelchairs), do these groups need a 24/7 closure, or would better crossings and timed closures (as at the Townley Road/East Dulwich Grove junction) work equally well?
After a lot of lobbying from One Dulwich and many other groups, the Council eventually opened up the Dulwich Village junction to emergency vehicles – which was a huge relief, as there had been a number of occasions when ambulances had been prevented from reaching people who needed urgent treatment.
We are now asking the Council to think again about people in Southwark who deserve particular consideration and compassion. The decision to close the Dulwich Village junction 24/7 discriminates against those who, for whatever reason, cannot walk or cycle and whose already difficult lives are made more stressful and more painful by this particular road closure.
While this injustice persists, we will continue to campaign on their behalf. Our next step will be to ask experts in equality law whether Southwark’s insistence on maintaining a 24/7 closure to all but emergency vehicles is a breach of its equality duty.