Epsom - Disabled must pay

Epsom and Ewell Borough Council met on Tuesday, and as per there was the usual raft of egregious decisions pushed through by the controlling Residents’ Association group. Examples of their scorn for those they allege to represent are almost becoming too legion to mention in full, but one really stood out this week.

On Tuesday, the RA pushed through plans to charge Blue Badge holders to park in Council car parks, ensuring that additional strain will be placed on the most vulnerable members of the Borough to help pay for the Council’s imagined deficit.* These plans were confirmed in the face of overwhelming opposition from local Residents, a petition of just under 1,000 signatures submitted to the Council, a campaign in the local newspaper, and strong feelings expressed by the disabled residents the Council saw fit to poll during their ‘consultation process’ (more on the failure of consultation here).

One Residents’ Association Councillor had previously resigned from the Group over the plans and duly voted against them along with every opposition Councillor. Even with these votes, and two abstentions, the motion was still carried due to the numerical advantage the RA has on the Council.

The main point raised by the RA in support of their plans was that there are other disadvantaged members of society that have to pay to use the car parks. This completely fails to recognise the differences between ‘disabled’ and ‘disadvantaged’, not least the fact that the disabled often have to use car parks where others don’t due to the difficulties of using public transport. In addition, it can often take a disabled individual much longer to pay for their parking as under both current and future plans they have to go to the parking office in person to pay/get any discount.

The new rules, which will come into effect, makes Epsom and Ewell one of the only 21 Councils in the country to charge the disabled to park. An incredibly regressive move.

I leave you with some rather unpalatable number crunching. During the meeting, one Councillor mentioned that the projected income from Blue Badge charging in 2010/2011 - £45,000 – is less than the Council spends on its newsletter - £54,000. Our Council obviously thinks it is more important to screw money out of the disabled than to stop telling us about it…

* One ex-RA Councillor made the excellent point that, despite a couple of years of declining revenue, the Council is still running a surplus, and has a significant emergency reserve in place to deal with any funding shortfall.