Access to the Assembly Estate

Part of 3. Questions to the Assembly Commission – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 3 April 2019.

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Photo of Helen Mary Jones Helen Mary Jones Plaid Cymru 3:16, 3 April 2019

I'm grateful to the Commissioner for his answer. It is with some regret that I have to raise a concern with him this afternoon. I recently had a disabled visitor for whom we had booked, weeks in advance, a car parking space. She's not an user of a wheelchair but she has a mobility impairment. When she arrived to take up this opportunity the space was not available to her, she was not able to park and this was even more unfortunate since she was attending the Assembly to attend the cross-party group on human rights. I'm not going to name the individual or refer to the date today, that would not be fair; I will write separately to the Commissioner in that regard. But can I ask that the Commission undertake a review of their policies with regard to the use of disabled parking spaces, to ensure that there are enough of them, to ensure that the systems—? I should emphasise that I've checked that the fault is not with my members of staff. I have checked before raising this with you that the booking was properly made.

I'm raising this here rather than writing about the one-off incident because the person concerned told me that this is not the first time that she has had this experience in this building, and if it has happened to her it may very well have happened to others. So, I would be grateful—I will write to you with the individual case so that you can look at that, but I would be very grateful if you would, as a Commission, investigate the provision of these spaces to ensure that this doesn't happen to any of our fellow disabled citizens again. I know that that would be very much what you as a Commission would wish.