LACKING the cash to make Harrow-on-the-Hill Tube station comply with disability equality legislation is not a valid excuse for not installing new lifts, according to an architect from Edgware.
Abe Hayeem, of Whitchurch Lane, a member of the National Register of Access Consultants and the Harrow Architects Forum, said: "What Boris Johnson has done is basically contrary to the Disability Discrimination Act which now includes transport.
"This needs to be complied with. It was brought in in 2005.
"Really, a lack of funding is no excuse, so it's quite an interesting case."
Like Mr Hayeem, nearly 300 people have signed up to our Give Us A Lift! Campaign.
The aim is to persuade Mr Johnson, Mayor of London and chairman of Transport for London (TfL), to restore money for the installation of five lifts at the station in College Road, Harrow.
Last year, Harrow-on-the-Hill was in the top third in a priority list of stations that needed step-free access but after Mr Johnson reduced TfL's accessibility budget in April, the works earmarked for the station were postponed for a decade.
Mr Hayeem said: "There's a legal requirement to provide equality of opportunity for disabled people.
"According to the Disability Discrimination Act, a company can make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people can use their services without unreasonable difficulty
"But if there's discrimination for disabled people as opposed to facilities provided for the general public and for able bodied people, that is clearly against the Act.
"Every single station should have facilities for disabled people, certainly major ones.
"TfL should have done it by now so it's well overdue. They were given about a year for the Act to be implemented."
He added: "An individual case can be taken up with the Disability Rights Commission, the body that helps people to take legal action and this obviously is the next course of action.
"Somebody should sue the Mayor of London.
"If they won the case, TfL would have to take action, not just in the distant future but right away. It may take just the threat of action to prompt TfL to say 'we're going to restore the funding'."
