Summary
I WROTE to the Parking Unit at Plymouth City Council on the last day of April, making a case for my parents, both in their eighties, to have a disabled parking space outside their house. My mother, aged 84, has recently returned from hospital, having been told that the painful condition of her spine cannot be treated except by painkillers, and she finds it very hard to get about. My parents have lived in the same house on a steep hill since the 1950s. Despite having lived all their lives in the city, and despite their having been rates, poll tax and council tax-paying citizens of Plymouth since then, last year the council refused to allow them a disabled parking space outside their own front door. The reason? There is a car port at the back of the house, built by my father, now 87, at the start of the 1960s. Since installing the car port, my parents have paid higher local taxes as a result. Every year since 1960 they have paid more money than their neighbours to the council because they made a space off-road at the rear of the house for a small car. When they did all this, my parents were in their thirties. These days the car port is inaccessible to my mother, who cannot climb the two steep steps and then haul herself the final two feet to the level of the car port floor. I've sent the council pictures to illustrate the impossibility of her being able to reach the car, but to no avail.
The council's website page about disabled parking carries the words, 'Disabled driver parking spaces are not provided to ... resolve driveway/ garage access problems', so there's little argument to be had. This is the ultimate cop-out. If you have built a car port up a steep climb that requires you to haul yourself up a 2ft step to finally reach the level of the car, and can no longer do this, tough; you've disqualified yourself from having a space by your home.See the full content of this document
Extract
Car Port Cop-Out ; Your Say...
I hav...
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