Christine Tongue: Curbing the kerb rage

Once a year Broadstairs holds a Town Forum. The local community groups come together in Pierremont Hall to report on what’s been happening in the town and what’s planned for the coming year.

I can turn up because it’s much easier to get into the hall now there’s a long ramp in to the back of the building where the French windows have a flat entrance. Word of warning – take someone with you to open the doors and alert the person who sets out the chairs you’re coming through on your mobility scooter. Accidents can happen!

No one likes to make a fuss about accessibility. You should be able to go everywhere able people can go without help. But it’s much better than a few years ago when access was via two shaky planks up the front steps.

We had reports from town officials and the voluntary groups that do so much to make our town a nice place to live. Or weird, depending on your tastes – ranging from VE Day celebrations to Punch and Judy on the beach, trick and treat trails, food and folk festivals and history walks. I had fantasies about combining them – Mr Punch leading a load of kids dressed as skeletons playing banjos up to stalls where Dickens characters distribute healthy snacks and sell parents powerful locally made booze. Perhaps with the Red Arrows overhead….

But actually, when the meeting started there was a lot of important new stuff going on. Like all the lucrative weddings in Pierremont Hall – providing income to fund town jollities like fireworks and nicer public gardens.

Mocketts Wood, one of the few bits of woodland in Thanet, has a new officer in charge who plans to create new trails and routes that will be wheelchair accessible. Really exciting news.

I was there to report on behalf of Access Thanet. “I feel guilty that amid all this positive activity, my main job is to grumble about accessibility.” But I did anyhow. The audience contained many of the local politicians who have been round with me on my mobility scooter looking at the street problems in our town. Luckily, my Kent County Councillor (KCC) John Finch, was sitting next to me, and promised me publicly to come scooting round town with me – when he’s “less busy”. I wonder what he’s doing. Perhaps he’ll tell us soon….

It’s KCC that’s in charge of our highways and pavements and if we have problems with potholes, dropped kerbs etc we need to report to them.

As it happens there’s one problem area in Broadstairs which now has a St George red cross marking it out. No idea who did it but it might be someone thoughtfully rebranding St George as the patron saint of dropped kerbs. Perhaps John Finch could help.

After the meeting I tried out how easy it is to report road problems.

On the KCC website, you can, in theory, pinpoint on a map where the problem lies. You don’t have the option to report missing dropped kerbs so I had to report on potholes.

You have to click on a map to show where the problem is. The map – strangely –  covers all of Kent, Sussex and Essex.  A real challenge for technophobes or the geographically challenged. I found it so confusing I rang the help number offered and got through to a very friendly woman who took down all the problems I wanted to report that day. About six of them, broken kerbs, potholes, dropped kerbs in impossible places – just for starters in my immediate neighbourhood. She reassured me I could report every problem I encountered.

One day later, I get a call from a KCC man about one of my reported problems. He’d been to see it at 8am that morning. Thrilled at an instant response my hopes of more comfortable mobility scooter rides are soon dashed. He’d investigated my first problem, the junction  at Gladstone Road, Broadstairs, with the High Street, where a worn bit of road makes the dropped kerb not dropped and my scooter gives me a good shake going over. Apparently, it isn’t bad enough to do anything about.

He sort of blamed me and my scooter for having solid wheels and not being a powered wheelchair, which copes better with obstacles.

I know scooters are still problematic and I should be grateful I can use wheels instead of my rubbishy legs but a bit of nice road repairing would make life more comfortable for me and many others.

A bigger scooter than mine, with bigger wheels, won’t go on public transport or in the boot of a car, or into my back garden. An all-terrain mobility scooter which will take kerbs and obstacles in its stride will cost more than £10,000.

A bit disheartened I said “What about the other things I reported?”

“You can only report one thing at a time! And the other places are not in my area anyhow.”

“WHAT!!! So that nice woman took ages taking it all down for me and I have to start again?”

“Yes.”

“ What about parking on pavements and across dropped kerbs?”

“That’s Thanet council. Send pictures to Parking Enforcement.”

“But they told me it was KCC….”

I’ve recently seen film of disability campaigners in Spain who are going out in their wheelchairs with pickaxes and applying a bit of direct action destruction to obstacles – including kerbs – that are blocking their way. Not that I think that law abiding folk like us should do that of course….

To report a problem email [email protected]. Good luck!