Anti-terrorism bollards will be installed around York city centre after the council’s executive gave its seal of approval.
Senior councillors approved the final locations of the bollards and to start the procurement process for the £1.8m project.
Counter-terror police have said the measures need to be brought in to stop ‘vehicle as weapon attacks’.
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The measures, which will be made up of a mixture of fixed and sliding bollards, have proved controversial after the council voted to ban blue badge holders within the footstreets area, which the bollards are designed to protect.
The executive will have a briefing with MI5 over the coming months to further discuss the project.
Several people again spoke out against the measures at Thursday’s meeting.
‘Devoid of coherence’
Disability rights activist Flick Williams said the council did not properly consider alternatives to removing the blue badge exemption and said that disabled people were already abandoning the city centre.
“Your anti-terror measures are devoid of coherence or consistency,” she said.
Jane Burton, speaking on behalf of York Accessibility Action, said: “This situation is bringing national shame upon the council…however it is still not too late to reconsider the discriminatory stance taken and to undertake meaningful negotiations with to radically improve the mitigiations necessary to reopen the city to its largest protected minority group.”
A crowdfunding page to challenge the decision has now reached more than £10,000, which will be used to prepare the case for an injunction to overturn the decision, according to a statement on the page.
The council’s deputy leader and executive member for transport Andy D’Agorne said: “I certainly want to recognise the difficulty of this decision in the impact it has on blue badge holders, but we have taken the decision and tonight is very much focused on implementing the locations for these hostile vehicle measures.”
Labour group leader Pete Kilbane told the meeting: “What you are doing tonight is entrnching discrimiation within the city – approving the money to pay for permanent discrimination against disabled people.
“It cannot ever be acceptable that we make parts of our city inaccessible to anyone because of who they are, and in this case because they happen to have a disability.
“Of course we need to protect our residents, but there are better ways of doing that.”