Charging the disabled, particularly wheelchair users, to  pay in our car parks is one thing – enabling them to do so is quite another.

Everyone is well aware that car parks are just another way of taxing the public, but surely if the perpetrators of increased charges had consulted – they might have discovered that many disabled people cannot reach the pay machines. Kerbs, road gradients and just the height of machines are making life even more difficult for the very section of our community that have a big enough struggle with everyday tasks as it is.

So has the Royal Surrey County Hospital and Waverley Borough Council had a compassion by-pass?

Hospitals charging disabled drivers to park could be in breach of the law, a leading lawyer says.

Some 37 NHS trusts charge disabled drivers to park, with some saying all drivers should be treated equally.

But disability rights lawyer Chris Fry says  this was a misreading of UK equality law.The Department of Health said patients who went to hospital often, or for long periods, had a right to fair and appropriate car-parking concessions.

Our MP Jeremy Hunt says the sick and disabled shouldn’t have to bear increased parking charges – oh yea! So what he going to do about it then?

This article is taken from that amazing on-line news site The Guildford Dragon. 

 Indeed, why would they wish to engage with Healthwatch or disability groups? After all the head honcho’s at RSCH  aren’t interested in what they have to say, ‘because they re not required to do so’, well, at least they are honest enough to say so!  The same goes for ‘Your Waverley’ who believe the sick are fair game.