A disgrace for disabled people in our area

As a supporter of the Changing Places campaign, I think it is a disgrace that Bexley Council doesn’t provide public toilets that meet the needs of local people with severe disabilities and their carers.

People with profound and multiple learning disabilities need Changing Places toilets - with a hoist, changing bench and plenty of space. Without them carers are often forced to change their disabled loved-ones on dirty toilet floors.

Bexley  Council has yet to install a Changing Places toilet. People with profound and multiple learning disabilities should have the same opportunities as everyone else. And carers have enough to contend with – let’s not make their lives harder by denying them the right to basic public facilities.

I encourage readers to take action sign the online petition about this important issue at www.mencap.org.uk/changelives

Monica Rivers, Crayford

Bomb Disposal

Your correspondent Chris Ransted seeks information on an incident that happened on Belvedere marshes in May 1941, when the Earl of Suffolk was killed while defusing a German bomb. 

My father, Arthur Stanley Steward, a local businessman and volunteer ambulance driver, was deployed to collect the remains of the earl and his assistants who were also killed. I was eight years old at the time and remember quite vividly my father bringing home the ambulance to wash out, after depositing the unfortunate victims in the underground hospital at Erith.

A full account of this was published in the Civil Defence Association Journal - April 2003. Further information can be obtained from The Secretary, Civil Defence Association, 24 Paxton Close, Matlock, Derbyshire DE4 3TD.

Furthermore, I was recently speaking to our local historian Ken Chamberlain, who informed me that he was currently corresponding with a member of the present earl’s family. Ken can be contacted through Erith Library.

I trust this brief information will be of assistance in Mr. Ransted’s research.

John Steward, Bexleyheath