A SCATHING new study concludes that York’s policy in restricting city centre access for motorists with blue badges is ‘not proportionate to the threat to life from terrorist activity’ and that the rights of disabled people were given ‘insufficient weight’ in decision-making.

The study, conducted by postgraduate students at York Law School for the Reverse the Ban coalition, includes interviews with counter-terror and disability rights academics from universities across the country, as well as a former North Yorkshire Police superintendent, a city planner and the chair of City of York Council’s ‘Protect and Prepare’ counter-terrorism task group, amongst others.

The study accepts that the council has a ‘clear and important responsibility to lower the risk of hostile vehicle attacks’, but says that it is required to do so by using the ‘least restrictive means possible’.

READ MORE: 'Blue badge holders could easily have access to the city centre'

But it says that the council’s Blue Badge policy – described by campaigners as a ‘ban’ on disabled people being able to access the city centre - failed to anticipate sufficiently the ‘far-reaching and severe impacts … for some disabled people’.

The report also claims that:

  • police guidance was misrepresented by City of York council staff as ‘mandating them to take specific action’
  • the blue ban policy ‘may have violated international human rights law by indirectly discriminating against disabled people’
  • the council’s actions painted disabled people as a hindrance and a risk to the safety and security of others, setting up an ‘us versus them’ culture and ‘encouraging the public to perceive the very existence of disabled people in the city centre as a threat to their lives’.

The report concludes: “Although the rights of disabled people and the need for effective counter-terror measures have the potential to be reconciled, this has not been achieved in York amidst a fundamental misunderstanding of discrimination.”

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A spokesperson for Reverse the Ban said: “The findings of this important independent study make for sobering reading. Disabled people, like non-disabled people, want their council to protect them from terrorist threats but this action has singled them out unnecessarily.

York Press: A blue badge protest in YorkA blue badge protest in York (Image: Newsquest)

“The ban has taken an intense toll on the emotional and mental health of many disabled people, their friends and family and has taken away our right to move around the city like non-disabled people.”

A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat group on the city council – which has run the authority in coalition with the Greens for the last few years – said it had ‘concerns over the independence and factual accuracy of the report which has been commissioned by a campaign group’.

The spokesperson added: “There are a notable number of factual inaccuracies and lack of evidence on which broad assumptions and claims have been made. Notably, no clear or evidence-based solutions as to different operation of the security barriers have been identified.”

Read the full report here.