A FAMILY has thanked the Chronicle for getting the council to change its mind over denying a disabled parking badge to a 92-year-old woman with two artificial hips and sight in just one eye.
Great grandmother Dorothy Parry, who met Winston Churchill while serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) during the war, was upset when Cheshire West and Chester Council rejected her application.
Widow Mrs Parry, of Hoole, who uses a walking frame, doesn’t drive but the badge means her sons Nigel and Jon can drop her close to places like the doctor’s or dentist.
CWaC has now relented saying the decision was based on the details provided on the form in which Mrs Parry, originally from Shocklach, said she could walk 400 metres.
Puzzled family members can’t understand why Mrs Parry, who was married to the late Bill Parry, was denied a badge having had one for the previous three years.
And son Jon challenged the council’s other argument that it had not been told of her visual impairment saying they wrote on the form ‘completely blind in one eye’ in two sections.
He said: “There’s clearly been an oversight and an error. Thanks to the Chronicle for your help.”
Mrs Parry, who has six grandchildren and three great grandchildren, was left ‘shocked’ by the original decision especially because she has had ‘some nasty falls’.
Her other son Nigel said: “What angered me a little bit – I’ll pull up at Sainsbury’s and some big fat bloke will jump out of his X5 in a disabled spot, run in, get his beer and run back out again. You see people all the time and you think what are they doing with disabled badges?”
Council spokesman Ian Callister said a new system had been introduced by the government to clamp down on fraudsters but accepted it was never intended to make life harder for people like Mrs Parry.
“She will have her pass tomorrow,” he said.
