Disabled left high and dry (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Disabled left high and dry

GAZETTE & HERALD: DISABLED shoppers are being forced to stay at home while mobility scooters remain locked away beneath Chippenham's Emery Gate because no-one is prepared to operate them.

North Wiltshire district councillor Jane Scott slated the management of the shopping centre for leaving the scooters idle for months, following a row over who should run the mobility scheme.

"The management of Emery Gate should back this," she said, at a meeting of the district council's Chippenham area committee on Monday.

"It is incredible we get the blame. The management of the shopping centre is making money out of this town and they are not putting anything back into it."

Sylvia Barnes, 76, of Lingfield Close, Chippenham, said the situation was disgusting.

"While this valuable asset is locked away, disabled people like me are being excluded from shopping," she said.

"Having the liberty to shop on your own can make all the difference to people with disabilities and on top of that, it also means that we are not actually spending money in the town.

"At Christmas, I was forced to do all my shopping through catalogues."

The shopping mobility scheme was set up by North Wiltshire District Council and Emery Gate as a one-year pilot project in 2001.

The district council provided the electric scooters and stored them in a lock-up in the car park beneath Emery Gate, while security staff at the shopping centre administered the scheme, so registered users could get about the town centre to do their shopping.

The scheme closed in September last year when the management at Emery Gate decided they no longer wished to operate it and months later, the scooters are ready for action but no-one can be found to run the scheme.

The scooters are all insured, repaired and serviced, and district council officers have met with the management at the shopping centre, but cannot convince them to take the scheme on again.

Marion Strickland, the treasurer of Chippenham Age Concern, is shocked and appalled by the situation.

"It's disgusting and as a town councillor it really grieves me that this is happening in Chippenham," she said.

Tina Lawrence, 53, of Ashe Crescent, Chippenham, suffers from arachnoiditis, which gives her chronic pain in her lower back and legs.

Unable to walk more than a few steps, she relied on the service to give her the freedom to do her own shopping every Saturday. She said she was very upset when she was given no explanation as to why she could no longer borrow a motorised scooter.

"When they suddenly stopped allowing us to borrow the scooters my husband pushed me around town in a manual chair, but this wasn't the same," she said.

"I could no longer shop when I wanted to and little things like seeing people, stopping and having a chat and being able to go and buy the things I needed, when I wanted, was no longer possible."

In desperation, Mrs Lawrence applied for a grant for a motorised scooter from the Borough Lands Charity. "I now have a chair thanks to them, but I feel for all the people who are still being prevented from getting out and doing their own shopping," she said.

Shopping centre manager Brian Poole said when the scheme closed down they had only agreed to take it on as a pilot scheme and argued it placed too much of a demand on security staff, who had to collect the scooters from the lower level and return them again, each time one was requested.

He said the shop owners and tenants wanted security staff in the mall, not the car park.

Coun Tim Northey has been searching for a voluntary group to take over the running of the shopmobility scheme but his appeals for help have fallen on deaf ears. "We are trying to organise a meeting with the CVS and Community First in order to get something up and running. I hope that's going to happen in the near future," he said.

Mr Poole and Lone Eagle Retail property manager Michael Bryant were unavailable for comment yesterday.