this is appalling
http://m.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/14394995.Disabled_fans_must_pay_for_parking__says_football_club/
What a mean spirited thing to do.
And if "many disabled supporters (have been) unable to obtain a space" then maybe they should provide some more. Not start charging and trying to make some fucking money out of it
This is not the short of thing I thought a trust owned club would be doing.
They should be ashamed of themselves
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I agree. Disabled supporters have little choice but to drive to the ground and park as close as possible. To charge them for it is a disgrace,
I'd like to know the thinking behind this. It seems on face value like a terrible idea.
Surely it's a good thing that disabled spaces are used and that fans with disabilities attend matches? Won't this move just discourage attendance? I suppose that is one way of freeing up parking spaces.
I'd like to know the opinions of those that use the disabled parking - is it true that there have been difficulties parking in practical parking spaces recently? If so, have the club consulted fans with disabilities about the parking situation and how to address the issue?
If they have and this was the result, then all well and good. But I suspect this is not the case. Time for a rethink and to speak to the fans affected by this proposed change.
I agree @Chris, the opinion of disabled supporters that use the spaces is what counts. But would any one be surprised if it turns out that non-disabled drivers are making use of a relatives blue badge and parking for free when they're not entitled to? Perhaps that's why the usage of these spaces is so high. All the club is doing is trying to ensure these spaces get used by genuine disabled drivers. Has anyone got any other ideas on how to achieve that?
Perhaps you'd like to draft Atos in to give them all an on the spot assessment?
If someone has been issued a blue badge then they are entitled to use it. I don't really know how the blue badges work in terms of enforcement, but I presume we are checking these things correctly.
I fail to see how the proposed approach will ensure spaces are used by people with 'genuine' disabilities.
Andrew Howard should urgently be made to issue a statement explaining why he has made such an uncaring decision. Surely it is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act?
I know a lady season ticket holder who has very limited mobility (uses a wheelchair most of the time) AND is a carer for her husband who has had a stroke. It is an utter disgrace that she should be required to pay an additional £120 next season and we may well lose her as a result of this.
I thought we were meant to be a family club and should not be trying to fleece disabled supporters.
charging for disabled parking is perfectly legal, it may not be good PR but certainly isn't against any law or act.
The income from these proposed charges would be negligible - about £1500 at a guess. Yesterday's event, taking into account gate money and sales of food and drink, presumably raised nearly ten times that amount. Wouldn't it be nice to think that the club have had second thoughts about such a penny pinching proposal.
If people are in fact abusing the free space arrangements (which would not be a great surprise) then that is something that needs to be looked into.
A pal of mine who is wheelchair-bound was incandescent when he heard what was proposed. To rub salt into his wounds, the day before the news broke, his father had called in to buy his season ticket and no mention was made about the proposed charges even though he had had to show his son's blue badge. For them it is the last straw and if the charge is in fact introduced they will not be returning next season.
Also, am I missing something, or is £120 for a Season Pass ridiculous when 23 x £5 = £115? I'm guessing that cup games would also be included but there's no guarantee we'd have any of these at home (this season we've only had one for example).
Play off games, Friendlies and Reading games perhaps, but still the club trying to make a profit out of disability.
Unless this has been discussed and agreed with the disabled supporters representative(s) - do we have one? - this does look to be insensitive. I'm not sure it's about making money however more about controlling the car parking better. Given however that disabled supporters need to pre-register beforehand to park for free we really should be able to establish how many (maximum) spaces we need. We could then say that they are reserved up to say 45 minutes before KO but after that they are open to paying car park customers.
I assume they are waving it about to see what sort of reaction (if no-one complains they will implement it) they get before backing down. Which they certainly should. Not what I would expect at all from the club.
They need to ditch it and do it swiftly
Absolutely awful. Plus at a time when many are having their disability benefits reduced/taken away. I'll definitely be emailing the Trust about this and would suggest others do the same. Surely a bit of fan power could stop this from happening?
We've several people in the Woodland Lounge who represent us as a whole and there is a higher proportion of disabled people in that room than elsewhere I think. I will alert one of them to the discussion on this thread.
When you add in the no existant senior discounts on season tickets the club is clearly blinkered in their targetting of the young and healthy. I know the BFP are after a spokesman from the fan base to further this story. Anyone interested contact them.
Any one telling me it's my club and it's family focussed has got it badly wrong.
One fan of more than 40 years I spoke to last week said the club has never felt so far away from them as it does now.
We can leave out the BFP they are no friends of the club. I think we need someone in charge of the bleeding obvious for instance its a bleeding obvious bad idea to charge badge holders for parking when we haven't previously.
Looks like Mr Howard has a PR disaster on his hands, and parking in the lower car park is more than £5 per game.
This came up on the Wycombe fb group and i remember a lot of similar sentiments.
unfortunately, it seems some people were misusing the spaces, things like using someone elses badge. Because challenging someone at time is very awkward, this is a way of legitimising their use as you have to register.
clearly harsh on the legitimate users though, punished for other bastards misuse.
Before immediately leaping to conclusions on this subject, I would want to go through the following thought process
1) has this been announced? have the BFP got the details right (they often do not)? Have the club explained this decision to those affected?
2) Why would the club do this? Does it make sense that this is a money making scheme? Well no, not really. A quick bit of research shows that while there is no public parking in the lower car park, they do have 10 car parking spaces. So 10 spaces at £5 *23 games gives potential revenue of £1150. (it is possible that 50% of this may go to charity it is a little unclear)
"There is no parking for the general public in the lower tier - spaces in the upper tier are £5 per car. There is also a car park behind Origin Global (on the left before the Adams Park gates), priced at £5 a car, the proceeds of which are split between the club and the Rennie Grove charity."
Howard is not stupid, he will know this potentially is bad publicity, he is unlikely to have risked this publicity for the sake of such a small sum.
3) So if its not about revenue generation, what is it about? Could just be that Howard is an idiot, but other evidence suggests that is simply not the case. So there must be another reason.
4) perhaps the clue is in the number of spaces. There are only 10, presumably due to space constraints. It is known that blue badge parking abuse is extremely prevalent - estimated that approximately half blue badge parking nationwide is fraudulent. it is extremely hard to manage day to day however. Could it be the intent here is to try to remove the incentive for fraudulent blue badge users to abuse the system to save £5 parking by making it the same price as higher level in order to preserve the parking spaces for those who really do need them.
5) Perhaps there is another good reason
6) Wouldn't it be better to find out perhaps at a fans forum instead of immediately jumping to a negative conclusion?
The majority of disabled fans will be on benefits that the government are cutting so how will they be able to afford to attend games at AP? Massive own goal by the club in my opinion and AH should be ashamed by doing this that will cost the club money in the long run with angry disabled fans not paying to attend games.
We can bang on about abuse of blue badges and limited spaces but at the end of the day, if you have a disability that means you can't walk far you should be first in the queue for a space. I'm sick of this attitude that because a few arseholes abuse something all the legitimate users should be made to suffer to appease the self-righteous mob.
Many people drive right up to AP for their own convenience, which is all fine but should never take priority over providing spaces for people with mobility problems.
I'd make the whole bottom tier a blue badge priority zone until 2.15 or so. And make it free for them like virtually every other decent organisation does. The rest of us can use our legs - we have the choice.
Perhaps they are assuming because George has smacked them about a bit in the Budget they'll have bigger things to worry about/spend their money on rather than football.
@arnos_grove That sounds like good sense if lack of spaces is the issue behind this. Make the bottom tier just for staff/players/officials/disabled supporters and maybe executive types and send everyone else to the top tier. Whether or not that is actually feasible I have no idea.
The club needs to look at some alternative solutions for disabled parking at the ground (and I talk about this from experience).
There is not enough disabled spaces and there would not be even if there was someone employed to carefully check that every one trying to use the spaces were doing so within the rights of their badge. (And that can cause as much bad will as these proposed changes from some areas of the disabled/carer community). Inflicting above average parking fees is harsh and won't really solve the problem. In fact, what it creates is additional premium parking with additional access space.
More concerning is that there is not a safe space for someone to be dropped off. On several occasions we've been asked to drop her off on the roundabout and park at the top. This would not be a problem in theory but getting a wheelchair out and then finding somewhere she is safe is. This seriously puts us off going to the ground and often I will burn my allotted respite to watch the team opposed to taking her with me.
Its a bigger issue than I imagine they think it is.
Interesting to get the perspective of someone who is directly affected by disabled access.
I get the point that it is an almost impossible job to assign someone to manage disabled spaces and decide whether or not someone should use them , other than by sing the blue badge system.
I assume that all other people parking in the lower tier on matchdays have to be there, and hence there are no additional spaces for disabled parking available.
Clearly the ideal theoretical solution is to allow cars to drop off those who require close access to the ground and then allow the car to be moved to alternative parking. Obviously this doesn't work for those where the disabled person is the driver or for those where the disabled passenger cannot be left (understandably some wheelchair user for example may feel unsafe being left in a car park with a large number of football supporters around for say 10 minutes while their relative/friend parks the car)
For obvious reasons the number f vehicle movements in the lower car park needs to be at a minimum after say 215.
Within those constraints, may I ask how you , Mer flyer, would redesign this matter.
"I assume that all other people parking in the lower tier on matchdays have to be there"
Why?
I enjoy the feeling of reading a DevC post and waiting for the assumption to come in. The obvious one has been picked up but my personal favourite on this post is:-
'For obvious reasons the number f vehicle movements in the lower car park needs to be at a minimum after say 215'
Such detail and so many layers to such an obvious guess. It's clear the anger of those discussing this subject is lost on DevC as no emotion ever comes in to his posts. He has though added so much whilst contributing nothing additional on real terms. A gasroom legend.
The clue is certainly the limited number of spaces @DevC.
Before the masses buy their spaces in the lower tier I would suggest that the club hold back, say, a dozen (in addition to those already marked under the away end stand) for use by legitimate users of blue badges.
Since my earlier posts above I have been in touch with one of our Woodland Lounge representatives and offered the following suggestion:
"On the optimistic assumption that the club are considering introducing a charge to prevent "unauthorised" occupation of disabled spaces (rather than as a mean-spirited, penny-pinching attempt to raise a sum of money out of all proportion to the level of annoyance caused and potential loss of some longstanding supporters) my suggestion would be to register entitled season ticket holders (after ensuring that the blue badge holder and ST holder are one and the same) and allocating a numbered space, if necessary just round the corner from the main area under the away stand if numbers are thought to make that necessary. A separate ticket for display inside the windscreen showing the number of the space allocated would probably be needed in addition to the blue badge so that a steward could quickly ascertain that all was above board."
To be honest, I think a lot of disabled users who need assistance (and, in this case, are not the driver) are quite used to be left places for a few minutes. The rest of the world is not always accessible so it is a fact of life that sometimes they have to wait while something is done.
The issue is getting there safely. As of right now, its is mainly a case of going across the car park where there is no obvious place to go apart from the road. Perhaps creating a pull in area at the back of the carpark where there is little traffic would be a better option. From there, they could even be taken into the bar area which is safe and warm. This would then allow cars (that can) to use the top car park and then do the reverse at the end of the game. The one down side is that a one way system would probably have to be introduced to the car park and it may delay some of the people at the bottom getting their early exit. Presumably this may have a cost implication as that is part of the advantage of their expensive seats/access. Someone at the club would have to do the cost/benefit analysis.
I should add that there is unlikely to ever be the 'enough' disabled parking but then there also has to be understanding from both sides that it is only feasible to provide so much. Creating an additional option does allow for more scrutiny to be put on the limited number of spaces.