Disabled-led commission calls for local decision-making power

A user-led commission is calling for disabled people to be placed at the centre of local decision-making, following a three-year inquiry into the barriers they face in their London borough.

Lewisham Disabled People’s Commission (LDPC) also calls for the local council to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into all its work.

And it wants funding to set up a new disabled people’s organisation (DPO) in Lewisham, and to create a new post for a disabled person to lead on co-production in the borough.

The new DPO would then co-produce an independent living strategy and an access strategy for Lewisham.

Among the other recommendations in the If Not Now, Then When? report is for Lewisham council to work towards scrapping all charges for social care, with interim steps such as reducing the level of care charges.

The commission was set up in late 2019 by Lewisham council – all its members were disabled people – but its work was delayed by the pandemic.

It was inspired by the ground-breaking work of Hammersmith and Fulham Disabled People’s Commission, which itself reported in 2018.

A survey conducted as part of LDPC’s work, which heard from nearly 400 disabled people who live or work in Lewisham, identified nearly 40 barriers they face in the borough.

Among its recommendations, the commission calls for a review of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on disabled residents.

And it suggests a new process that would enable disabled people in the borough to report problems with dropped kerbs and tactile paving, and other access barriers such as overgrown vegetation and blocked pavements.

It also says that disabled people should be able to report buildings that fail to provide access for wheelchair-users, with the council to remind offenders of their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act.

The commission’s report says there are no railway stations in Lewisham that offer full step-free access without the need for staff support with ramps, while only five of the 20 stations are fully staffed and accessible, allowing wheelchair-users to turn up and travel.

Of the remaining 15 stations, three are not wheelchair-accessible at all, and two do not have wheelchair access to all platforms.

The remaining 10 stations have staffing only part of the time, so disabled people “cannot travel at will, and must wait for staff to come and deploy ramps”.

The commission was chaired by disabled writer, poet and campaigner Jamie Hale, who told Disability News Service that nothing the commission uncovered particularly surprised or shocked him.

But he said he found it “particularly bleak” that 18 of the survey respondents (nearly five per cent) did not always have access to food and drink, 20 could not wash or be washed regularly, 19 could not use the toilet when they needed to, nine did not have a toilet they could use at home, 25 did not have a bath or shower that was accessible to them, while 31 (more than eight per cent) could not move around their home easily using their mobility aids.

In all, nearly one in five of the respondents (17 per cent) were in at least one of these groups.

Hale praised Lewisham council for its support and “positive engagement” and said he hoped it would now commit to making the changes the commission has recommended.

But he said the crises facing disabled people “cannot be solved by local government alone”.

He said: “For disabled people to live in an equitable world, we need benefits that keep pace with wages and inflation, access to free social care built around independent living and the support people need to achieve their aspirations, and a real commitment to a national programme of building accessible, adaptable, and adapted homes.”

Hale called on other local authorities to commission similar disabled-led projects, but only if they are properly funded – as LDPC was – and include an “explicit commitment to the implementation of the recommendations made as far as possible, without which the research and reports are no more than window-dressing”.

He says in the report that Lewisham “must centre deaf and disabled people in decision making processes” and use co-production “to develop long-term strategies addressing both broader borough access barriers and the barriers to independent living, which respond to the needs of our residents”.

He adds: “This research has demonstrated that work is needed across Lewisham, from the accessible provision of NHS services to wheelchair access in Lewisham Centre, from public transport to hate crime.

“It is clear that in places, core legal obligations are not always being met around the provision of safe appropriate housing, compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty and the Equality Act.”

Lewisham council aims to respond to the report this summer.

Damien Egan, the Labour mayor of Lewisham, said: “I have taken away a lot from this report which shines a light on the barriers that too many deaf and disabled people face.

“We need to be better at making sure deaf and disabled people are at the heart of our decision making and as a council, we must embed the ethos of ‘Nothing about us, without us’.

“I would like to thank Jamie Hale and all the commissioners who have worked so hard for the last three years to produce this detailed report.

“We all agree that this is just the beginning of a much longer piece of work towards our ambition to make Lewisham the best and most accessible borough.”

Picture: Jamie Hale (centre, in wheelchair, without mask), other members of the commission, Damien Egan (centre, back row) and Lewisham councillors

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…