Parts of Teesside aren’t well suited to getting around in a wheelchair. But one couple has thrown down the gauntlet to leaders and the public alike as Alex Metcalfe reports.

 

CLIMBING mountains is hard. But for some people those mountains are just a few inches high. Billingham’s Carrie Clough has used a wheelchair and a powerchair to get about for the past 25 years – and a kerb or a parked car can leave her trapped in a tricky situation. 

Her husband Chris is the independent councillor for the town’s west ward and has campaigned to introduce dropped kerbs and more space for disabled motorists since his election in 2015. He was instrumental in launching a Stockton Council review into disabled parking – sparking leaders to agree a clamp down on fraudulent use of blue badges and train up enforcement officers to prosecute offenders last year. They also agreed an audit of disabled bays to see what they could do and vowed to work with disability advisory groups to develop new car parks. But the couple say all three aims have slipped – and they have had enough. “We’re now over 15-16 months later and it would appear nothing has been done,” says Cllr Clough. “It was put through as a task and finish group in order to have some results – and at the meeting we both attended, Carrie offered to give them the inside track. And we heard nothing. 

“We had not heard anything until that meeting – and even then I think we only got what we did at that meeting because I twisted their arm rather severely.”

Cllr Clough posed some tough questions at the meeting in question – a select committee in Stockton. “Do you as officers actually understand what the needs of the disabled are without actually talking to the disabled?” he asked. He says: “I kicked this piece of work off originally and we have virtually stopped coming to Stockton. We’ve stopped because of the parking issues we’ve had. I fully appreciate you’ve got a lot of parking spaces for the disabled – the numbers are great but the locations are not so good.”

Stockton Council handed out 139 fines for parking is disabled bays without a valid badge in 2017/18 – and its civic enforcement officers do seize fake, stolen, expired and misused badges. But it does not yet prosecute motorists for blue badge fraud. Officers have pledged work would be done to train up officers in the next month or two – and they will invite Carrie along to help identify troublesome spots. 

However, Carrie says “space abuse” in spots earmarked for the disabled tended to be the main problem. “People are parking there who just should not be parked there,” she adds. “For me, it’s a huge problem – you park there and the only time you can get a space after 10am is if it’s being policed – otherwise, they are always full. I just think are there really that many disabled people?”

Disabled motorists can park on double yellow lines for up to three hours. But Cllr Clough says disabled spaces were often full up in Stockton – and sometimes badly designed. He adds: “You can have these parking spaces, but if they’re no use to you because once you’re in them, you don’t have sufficient room to open doors properly to get out. You don’t have dropped kerbs where you need them and you don’t have parking spaces in the right places.”

Spaces at John Whitehead Park, in Billingham, are a particular bugbear. The pair explained the lack of dropped kerbs often meant Carrie had to face oncoming traffic to get out of the road. “They are horrible,” she says.  “It’s really bad and really scary – it’s coming at you and you’re playing chicken with the traffic."

Originally from Texas, Carrie came to Teesside 19 years ago. She suffered a brain haemorrhage in her late 30s leading to her life in a wheelchair. Carrie says attitudes had improved in recent decades but there was still work to be done. “It’s much better than it was all those years ago,” she adds. “And I do give kudos to the council for listening to us, but now they need to do something."

Another obstacle the pair said they faced was abuse and ignorance from the public at large. Cllr Clough offered up a case in point. 

He adds: “It’s the sheer laziness of people – we were at Teesside Park earlier in the year and we wanted to get down a dropped kerb to cross back into the main shopping centre from Morrisons. There was a woman who’d parked a big truck across the end of a dropped kerb and we had nowhere to go – so we stood there wondering want to do. 

“She came out and I challenged her but all you get is a whole load of abuse." 

Stockton Council has been contacted for comment.