COUNCILS exist to provide essential services such as infrastructure maintenance and waste collection. Councils should also help the vulnerable and create an environment in which residents and visitors can enjoy life to the full.

This should apply both to the fit and to the disabled. Unfortunately, a lack of proper toilet and changing facilities can sometimes limit the ability of a disabled person to get out and enjoy the area. As a goal, we should strive to ensure that anyone who has mobility difficulties should be able to experience much of what the area has to offer. Sadly that is sometimes difficult because of the lack of appropriate facilities.

Normal toilets just do not meet the needs of all people with disability, particularly people with profound learning disabilities or serious physical difficulties. Their needs can often only be met by a Changing Places toilet, which has the necessary special equipment Sadly we have a dearth of such toilets in our area.

There may be as many as a quarter-of-a-million people who need these facilities in order to be able to get out and about without worrying over the availability of the right facilities.

Here is a quote from an assistant teacher of disabled children

“I can tell you plenty of stories. Especially working with children with disabilities. The main one is the fact that these children have to be changed on the floor in public toilets, or we have also been known to change them whenever possible in the back of the mini-bus; with staff stood with coats or blankets to hide the children’s modesty. Imagine how the child's dignity is taken away from them laying on a dirty toilet floor.”

Let’s do something about this. Now is a particularly appropriate time, given the new status of the Lake District National Park.

I am therefore proposing to our council that we put aside £50,000 of capital from the monies we received from new housing. This money will be put into a pot that community groups can bid into for improving or building disabled toilets and related facilities. Priority would be given to Changing Places toilets. I am optimistic that I will get cross-party support for the proposal.

My hope is that by using this money as ‘seed money’, communities will be able to obtain additional grants that will allow them to build new facilities for the disabled and in particular new Changing Places facilities.

Let’s do this!

Together we can make a difference to people’s lives

Giles Archibald

Leader of South Lakeland Council