Agenda item

This report provides information to the Committee on the work of the Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team. The report gives an overview of the Team, the work undertaken to date and planned in the future, as well as key achievements and challenges.

Annie Baker, Assistant Director Street Environment Services provided an update on the work of the Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team. The report was co-authored with Jane Wilmot, Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team Co-Chair. This update included an overview of the Team, the work undertaken to date and planned in the future, as well as key achievements and challenges.

The following points were noted:

• The Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team was set up in 2024. The Team now plays in co-production work across the Place directorate.

• The Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team is made up of council officers and disabled residents and meets monthly with 10 meetings per year.
• The remit and membership of the group.
• Successes to date included:

1. Access Audit of King Street and monitoring.
2. Site visits to understand the barriers at staggered crossings and bus stop bypasses ?on King Street and Wood Lane/South Africa Road.
3. The Development of Street-smart Guidance.
4. The implementation of Disabled Shopper Bays and issues regarding E-Bikes.

• Key challenges:

1. The provision of Inclusive technical information.
2. Working with other organisations, and recruitment.
3. The use of Resources and maximising impact:

• “Doing things with residents, not to them” – further examples from the Place Directorate.
• Information on future work streams.

The Chair, Councillor Rory Vaughan invited Kate Betteridge, local resident member of the Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team to provide her comments. The Committee heard that it had been an honour for the Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team to work with Councillors and everyone had learnt from each other. Disabled residents rightly had expectations as they wished to live independently withing the Borough. The group would continue to highlight barriers to officers, so by working together these could be overcome.

Councillor Adam Peter Lang congratulated the Group on its work to date and asked if there was anything Councillors / the Committee could do to assist them further? In response, Annie Baker confirmed that raising awareness of what the Group was doing as well as need for new members to come and work as part of the team were critical factors. Kate Betteridge commented that geographically across the borough, the Inclusive Environment Disabled Residents Team would like better representation as many of the current membership were centrally located around the Fulham / Hammersmith borders and White City. However, the Group was not represented to the East or West of the borough.

Councillor Adam Peter Lang agreed with the concerns that had been raised about E-Bikes, and in particular, where they were stored and asked if there anything else Council could do in terms of Parking bays or funding from central government to support a greater pan-London approach to E-Bikes.

In response, Mark Raisbeck, Director of Public Realm, confirmed E-bikes were a growing and important part of the transport network. However, their popularity was having consequences the Council did not want such as the parking of large numbers of bikes often in inappropriate locations. To address this, the Council was rolling out additional parking stations off the footway and Lime (one of the largest providers of E-bikes) had recently announced a £20 million package for London to address the issue. Mark Raisbeck confirmed that the Council would continue to work with E-Bike providers, alongside disabled residents to find a way of overcoming issues. Kate Betteridge confirmed that E-Bikes / scooters were recurrent theme at Disabled Residents Team meetings. She provided details of an incident in Covent Garden and reiterated, it was her view that Lime, Forest, Dot and others needed to start penalising e-transport users if they were not using the bikes/scooters in a responsible way, as the Council could not be held responsible for independent transport businesses.

Councillor Ashok Patel reiterated the issues which had been raised about E-bikes and suggested more should be done by the respective business to control; how they were used and stored. Mark Raisbeck confirmed that the issues which had been raised about E-bikes were the same faced by many Councils’ across London, and officers would continue to work with E-bike providers to address these in innovative ways going forwards.

Councillor Rory Vaughan asked what the step and railings at the crossing on Wood Lane involved and how well the disabled shoppers bays just off King Street worked. In response Kate Betteridge explained how the shopping bays operated and confirmed these were working well. With regards to the crossing at Wood Lane, Annie Baker confirmed that she would need to provided details outside the meeting.

Action: That Annie Baker provide further details on step and railings at the crossing on Wood Lane.

The Chair thanked officers for the co-production report and was pleased that there was a significant amount of work being done across a range of issues throughout the Council.

Resolved

1. That the Committee note and comment on the report