Facilities for wheelchairs.

Today I visited a workshop in an industrial park. The facade of the building is just big enough to have a door and parking space for one car. We drove there but could not park in front of the workshop because the parking was for disabled people only. When I asked the chap at the workshop he just sighed "regulations". We got into the workshop: a cramped space full of machines with very narrow corridors in between them (in some of them you have to walk sideways to get through). The amazing thing was the toilet: a fully prepared one for a wheelchair. No way a wheelchair can get to the door of that toilet through those corridors!!! When I asked the guy again he just said the word again: regulations.

I have always strongly supported having facilities for disabled people but it is ridiculous they make this guy with a tiny workshop have them.

When I came back I had a look at the tube map of "Transport for London" web page (www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/colourmap.pdf). There are 365 tube stations in London of which only 83 are prepared for wheelchairs. Of these 83 only 7 are in "zone 1" and 38 are in the Greenwhich area where the tube is new. According to the map, none of the major London train stations (Victoria, Kings Cross, Paddington and Liverpool Street) have facilities for wheelchairs.