Mr. John Fulham:

I accept the principle. To me as a person, use of the shared space and allocation of same is common sense, or uncommon sense, as it may be. Key to all of this is consultation and the inclusion of the voices that need to be heard, which are the voices of people with disabilities, the elderly, those with visual impairments or whomever the audience is.

To go back to the point about opening up after lockdown when we put tables and chairs on footpaths, the question is where we expected people to go. That is a primary example of where opening up after Covid and welcoming the opening up and businesses being able to re-engage and earn their living was not done in consultation. As a disabled person, it felt that we went back 20 years in consultation. What was put in place was not done in consultation. The impact was that everybody - wheelchair users like me, visually impaired people and people with buggies - was discommoded and put out into a space where they should not have been. It is perfectly acceptable in principle, but not the way it was done.