Disabled Parking and the Armed Forces Covenant

Apart from the Royal School of Military Engineering established over 200 years ago, there are a few hundred ex-serving Sappers of the Corps who have settled in Medway from all parts of the country over the years, me being one of them.

The Armed Forces Covenant, being a statement of moral obligation between the nation, the Government and the Armed Forces, including those currently serving and veterans and their immediate families, was enshrined into law by the Coalition Government in 2011.

This was expanded by the creation of an Armed Forces Community Covenant, to facilitate local communities explicitly expressing their support for their local Armed Forces in the form of a written pledge between their local authority along with interested local businesses, organisations and charities.

The two core principles to the Covenant are; to remove disadvantages arising for service people from membership or former membership of the Armed Forces; and that special provision for service people may be justified by the effects on such people of membership, or former membership of the Armed Forces.

There has been some misinterpretation of those core principles in thinking that the Covenant was designed to advantage those currently serving along with veterans of the Armed Forces, giving them priority over those who have not served, whereas the definition is "to remove disadvantages"; in other words, it puts them on parity with everyone else.

Surely the laws on discrimination would achieve this same level of parity anyway?

Regarding Mr. Peter Hosking, as reported in last week's Medway Messenger, whilst one may have sympathy with his plight, as indeed I do, because his eventual amputation resulting from a leg injury sustained some twenty years ago was nothing to do with his military service, he does not qualify for the 'special provision' element of the Covenant.

The case has however highlighted that the Tory Medway Council, through incompetence, is disadvantaging not only Mr. Hosking, but the other 157 disabled persons on the list in front of him and no doubt many behind him, who are in urgent need of a disabled parking bay as close as possible to their respective homes.

If the local authority is adopting the Armed Forces Covenant in any meaningful way, it needs to inform us of what it is doing and how, especially with such a large local population of veterans. In the meantime, it needs also to get its' act together and make proper and much needed provision for those who are disabled among us.