A WHEEL chair user who moved into bungalow with disability facilities on Penistone’s newest housing estate has been unable to get into town since she moved in more than two months ago because her path is blocked by a metal ‘kissing’ gate.

Lottie Davis-Browne, 35, was delighted when she was offered the bungalow at New Chapel Road on the new Persimmon estate because she had been living in a terraced house where she was unable to get upstairs.

But that feeling of ‘winning the lottery’ turned to disappointment when she realised she could not negotiate Chapel Lane to get into Penistone because it has no footpaths and a very tight, blind bend.

The other pedestrian route is a footpath, which was partly constructed as the estate went up.

But it runs into an existing path which leads to Clarel Street and that is blocked for the disabled by a kissing gate, apparently installed to deter bikers when it was primarily an access to Cubley Woods.

Lottie said she had contacted the builders and Barnsley Council, which each said the gate was the other’s responsibility before Barnsley Council eventually told her the gate would be removed.

Read more in this weeks Barnsley Chronicle