Mackett, RL; Titheridge, H; Achuthan, K; (2012) The impact of changes in access to local facilities on the wellbeing of elderly and disabled people. Presented at: International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons (TRANSED 2012), Delhi, India.

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Abstract

An important element of wellbeing is the ability to reach the facilities and services needed for a healthy and fulfilling life. Many of the needs of everyday life for elderly and disabled people are met through the provision of local services such as post offices and public libraries. Elderly and disabled people with no car or on low incomes may need such services in order to maintain their health, income and quality of life. In Britain there is a policy of rationalising such services, sometimes in order to save money, and sometimes as part of a modernisation programme. For example, the British Government initiated the Post Office Network Change Programme in order reshape the network in order to reduce the cost of providing such services. Since October 2007, approximately 2500 branches have been closed. Public libraries are being closed to save public expenditure. However, in developing these re-organisation programmes the access and equity issues are rarely considered systematically. One way to address these issues this is to use a computer-based tool, such as AMELIA (A Methodology for Enhancing Life by Improving Accessibility), which was developed in the Centre for Transport Studies at University College London as part of the research programme of the AUNT-SUE consortium (Accessibility and User Needs in Transport in a Sustainable Urban Environment). AMELIA has been designed to test the extent to which transport and other policies influence social inclusion. AMELIA is a user-friendly, policy-oriented interface to a Geographic Information System (GIS). It requires data on the population in the group being considered (elderly people, disabled people and so on), the destinations that they wish to reach (shops, post offices, health facilities and so on) and how they can travel there. AMELIA can then be used to see how many more (or fewer) of this group can reach the opportunities as a result of the policy actions. In the paper AMELIA is applied to examine the implications of reorganisation programmes for post offices and public libraries in Hertfordshire, a relatively wealthy area to the north of London with high car ownership and a mixture of urban and rural areas, and St Albans a city within Hertfordshire. The results are presented in terms of the changes in the access to post offices and public libraries by elderly and disabled people to see the effects of the policies underlying the programmes of change on their wellbeing. The discussion revolves around the importance of access to local facilities for elderly and disabled people and how changes in the pattern of services can have a disproportionate impact on elderly and disabled people.

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