Access ALL Areas - Bromley South Campaigners
Access ALL Areas is the name of a local campaigns group from Bromley South. Here is their story written by the secretary of the group Jo Letts, on how their campaign developed and achieved its goal of making Bromley South train station accessible.
Also the group now have a website at http://accessbromley.wordpress.com/
It all began in 2007 when a small group of residents, staff & volunteers from St Cecilia's decided to see how easy it would be for wheelchair users to take a train journey from Bromley South Station.
As it turned out, it was impossible and so the campaign to make Bromley South Station more accessible began. We really did not know where to start, we had a word with the station manager on the day & also filled in a complaints form, the group knew that more had to be done but were unsure of the next step so they invited Elle along to see what could be done
The residents of St Cecilia's decided that they wanted to set up a campaigning group called Access All Area's, they were absolutely passionate about this, the success of the group has been driven by the energy & enthusiasm of the residents & Elle the Local Campaigns Coordinator's fantastic input (especially her support to the residents in writing letters).
The group set up a face book account to gain support, an online petition, and some local press cover, a slot on the BBC news and a Day of Action in Bromley Town Centre collecting signatures for the petition. The response was overwhelming, it seemed that this was a subject close to everyone's hearts, parents with buggies, people with mobility impairments, shoppers, commuters, it was incredible to see people queuing up to sign the petition. We invited Bromley's MP to one of the meetings and we also had a visit from Network Rail. At this point I think we all felt that this was a huge, huge project which would cost millions of pounds & really that no one was going to listen to little old us.............. How wrong we were!
I imagine you are all thinking of the work load in setting up something like this! A few meetings and a little organisation and this baby took on a life of its own, before we knew it we had confirmation that we had won the fight not just for the wheelchair users in Bromley but the whole of the community. What a feeling!!!!! The group are now eyeing up the next challenge, so watch out Bromley!!!!!!