Appeal won for disabled

Press, 26 February 1983, Page 11

Appeal won for disabled

Further provision should be made in the Christchurch District Scheme Review for access for disabled persons into buildings and on city streets. the Planning Tribunal has decided. In an interim, reserved decision, the tribunal's chairman, Judge Skelton, said that the joint appeal by the Christchurch Co-ordinating Council for the Handicapped and Mr Frank Chisholm against the Christchurch City Council, objecting to its District Scheme Review, had been allowed. Each appeal was concerned with a lack of provision in the review for access for the disabled into new buildings and on new and reformed streets.

"Parliament intended that district planning schemes should, where appropriate, make provision for disabled persons in the ways envisaged by the Disabled Persons Community Welfare Act,” Judge Skelton said. “It is the tribunal’s opinion that Parliament stopped short of making it mandatory that a local authority should make such provision in its district scheme, because different planning districts will have different needs,” he said. The Christchurch City Council had said that it was meeting the needs of the disabled in the city in other ways and that it should not be required to make any

provision in its District Scheme beyond a reference to the relevant statutory provisions. he said. There was no doubt that the City Council was taking a responsible attitude to its statutory duties over access for the disabled, and the council had by-laws relating to access to buildings for the handicapped, he said. Judge Skelton referred to the' inability of one of the witnesses to give her evidence at the hearing because she was confined to a wheelchair and was unable to get up the stairs to the first-floor hearing room. The witness was Dr Gwenda Lewis, a member of the Co-ordinating Council for the Handicapped. Her writ-

ten evidence was accepted by the tribunal instead. Judge Skelton said that the Kilmore Street building in which the tribunal' held its hearings in Christchurch was built in 1968, well before legislation required buildings to provide access for the disabled. “The tribunal does not take any comfort from that fact, for it is anxious to ensure that members of the public have access to its public hearings,” he said. “If the tribunal had beenaware of the difficulty faced bv this witness before the start of the hearing, suitable alternative arrangements could have been made to enable her to give evidence."