Disabled drivers need easy access to the hospital

Firstly not all blue badge holders receive a mobility allowance which entitles them to ‘free everything’.

I have a blue badge simply because of an inability to walk very far due mainly to knee replacements, osteoarthritis and other problems.

Secondly not all badge holders want free parking, just the ability to actually have far less distance to negotiate to either the fracture clinics, A&E or indeed slightly further to the main entrance for various other clinics.

I guess that disabled bays in the main car parking area have disappeared in order to allow an extra four–five spaces to become available for revenue purposes only.

Indeed in the eight years I have visited the hospital not one attendant has ever opened my wallet to see if I actually had a badge let alone see if it belonged to me.

Not everyone is a scrounger and before she should reply that we can still park in the main area, (which fortunately I can) it is not now suitable for wheelchair users.

Should she ever have the need for a disability badge she might have a better understanding of why they are issued in the first place.

Finally I do concur that the MRI scanner is essential for diagnostic reasons, indeed I have had the opportunity of using it twice but it is the inept decision, probably by an able-bodied person, to actually place disabled bays in that area especially as the mammogram scanner is often (if not all the time) parked opposite.

One of your readers some weeks ago also commented on the inability of someone to actually unlock the ‘back door’ thus enabling patients to even enter the building.

Your previous article stated that George Melling had listened to blue badge holders, shame I wasn’t one of them.

Mrs B L Benn

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