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Red card for blue badges
• EVER since the Emirates stadium opened three years ago, parking around my area in Highbury has been a nightmare for local residents, due to the considerable number of vehicles displaying blue disabled badges availing themselves of the bays paid for by residents’ permits.
During this time I have made numerous complaints to AFC and Islington Council, who have respectively neither attempted or been able to remedy the situation.
A couple of matches ago I counted and photographed over 70 vehicles displaying blue badges –in just a short walk around the block. I emailed this evidence to the stadium manager, and received a dismissive response that it was beyond his remit, since AFC have fulfilled their “requirement” of 104 disabled spaces within the stadium. So, too bad then. But I can’t say I was surprised as it is consistent with AFC’s general disregard in matters relating to the local community.
Why should the local community, as well as having to put up with road closures and saturated public transport have to accommodate disabled match-goers?
I know some of them are fraudulent and that the council in its feeble way is trying to crack down on this (indeed, if some of them are not fraudulent I would be recommending the Emirates stadium as a much more effective alternative to Lourdes). But I am sure the majority are genuine, and AFC are doing both the genuine disabled and the local residents a callous disservice as long as they fail to put forward any meaningful proposal as to how disabled match-goers cannot be properly accommodated within those vast footprints of land that they have acquired.
Name and address
supplied, n5
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