Calls for council to install more dropped kerbs in parks to help mobility scooter and wheelchair users

Ulster Unionist councillor, Hazel Legg called on its decision-making environmental committee to end inequalities of access by lobbying officers to bring back a report on the issue.

Cllr Legg said she was made aware of the lack-of-access for disabled users when she attended Dundonald’s Moat Park on August 31.

She said that a wheelchair user, who parked at the facility, discovered that there was no drop kerb that he could readily use.

The Castlereagh East councillor is now looking for the local authority to address the issue right across all of Lisburn and Castlereagh’s public parks and other amenities.

Cllr Legg said: “I had cause to visit Moat Park on [Tuesday] with a wheelchair user and he discovered whenever he had parked his car and got into his wheelchair that there was no dropped kerb beside the disabled parking spaces.

“This was stopping him from having access to and from the Moat Park area and almost in a joke it was on the councillor to sort it out.

“But I did say to them that I would make sure that this was raised because it may be the situation with other parks, I don’t know, all I can speak on this occasion is Moat Park and I would be grateful if this could be taken forward.”

Director of Environmental Services, Heather Moore said that she would liaise with officers to address the issue in due course.