I hope you are all having one of the good days today x
I am after some help and advice with obtaining a blue badge… basically I had a relaspe of vertigo and optic neuritis just before Christmas which lasted through until last week and the residual is still here (body still recovering from all the bed rest and fatigue). By trying to stay as active as possible I have been attending appointments at hospital and my doctors and also doing some smaller treks out to the local shops and the school runs, but these have been hampered by the distance I could/now can walk.
I applied for a Blue Badge which has been declined as my ‘disability falls short of that required for the higher rate of the mobility component of the DLA’. I am lucky and feel that I do not need DLA as I am ‘normally fine’ for 9-10 months of the year but when I have a relaspe I do need the help, the council stated that MS is not a permenant condition - bad choice of words!
I have got a medical assesment on the 7th February with the council’s allocated doctor but I am unsure if it is worth going to try and explain my case, how can you explain that you wouldn’t use the blue badge unless I need to?
Thanks all… I do believe that they have to be careful that the badges are not handed out to just everyone who applies, but they do make it difficult for us!
My council is Luton Borough Council and this is a copy of their reasoning…
‘The applicant’s inability to walk or severe difficulty in walking must be permanent and not just intermittent or temporary. In other words, the degree of disability should not fall short of that required to qualify for the Higher Rate of the Mobility Component of the Disability Living Allowance.’
The assesment I am going to on the 7th is to attempt to obtain a badge and I need to provide medical evidence to support this, I am guessing my recent hospital visit notes, my current return to work plan will suffice? I suppose walking normally into the meeting will go against me too!
How many hoops do we have to jump through to be able to get out and about, or should I just become housebound!
My MS is chronic, I have more bad days than good and I dont see much improvement on daily basis. How on earth your council state its not a permanent condition, do they know of a cure that I dont?
What utter rubbish, if you are experiencing difficulty with mobility then you are entitled to a blue badge and please do ask them what their interpretation of ms is - then let us know because they obviously know something we dont.
I would go for it, I need mine and without wouldnt be able to go anywhere as walking any distance wears me out. I then have to suffer fatigue and stay in for days, or even weeks.
NOT A PERMANENT CONDITIION - me thinks the ms society needs to send councils information so they can update their criteria.
Were the words exactly as you typed them in a previous comment? I ask because it doesn’t read to me that they were talking about MS, just that you were describing the symptoms as not being there all the time. So it’s correct to say your condition - in terms of how your MS is affecting you - is intermittent. If you have RRMS sometimes you may be perfectly back to ‘normal’, and other times really badly affected. I have SPMS and wasn’t diagnosed until at least 30 years after my odd medical problems started. So, sometimes I had some eye pain. Then I was OK for a few years, then I had something else, then I was OK again. And so on. So my condtion (think of how horses or dogs are described as being in good condition) was intermittent.
I think it’s a stupid choice of words too! When I applied for a blue badge I wrote that the nature of MS is that the symptoms aren’t constant, and that I was going to describe a really bad day as I had been adviced to do that. I made it clear that was what I was describing, plus how ‘good’ a ‘good’ day really isn’t! They could get back to me if that wasn’t what they wanted me to do.