Writing to your Local Councillors: Part Two

I used the write to them website to send this message to the three councillors for my area:

"I am a Trans-gendered person living in the [edited out] area. I
feel the area is very unsafe for me a lot of the time, and prefer to
stay out of it as much as possible. This interferes with me doing
everyday things, due to the discrimination I feel when dealing with
other members of the public and shop owners in the area. It is not an
easy thing to go through on a personal level, and to suffer intolerance
and ignorance while doing things that are mundane does not make it any
easier; Thankfully however, I have friends and family that support who
I am, and encourage me to carry on living my life.

I wanted to raise this with you this and hope that I might persuade you
to help promote equality and acceptance of gender variant people, in
order to make the area a better place to live for people of genders
outside the norm, and reduce inequality and ignorance in the area in
which I live.

I also wish to raise an issue I had while waiting to be seen by
Sheffield's specialist clinic held by the NHS. From my GP's referral to
having an initial consultation, I was left waiting for seven months. It
is my understanding that this is unacceptable given the nature of my
problems, and the guidelines that the NHS must abide by. Their waiting
list is very long, and they can only take on a limited number of new
cases a month. I am lucky that I am now being seen by them, but the
delays are wholly detrimental to the well-being of individuals on the
waiting list.

Thank you for reading my letter, it is my hope that you can reply
positively to it."

The reply from an independent councillor here:

"Thank you for writing to me.

You will see from the list of names above that I have sent your enquiry on to your Member of Parliament, the Police, the Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Homes Limited and their officers, and officers of the council.

There does appear to be serious issues that need addressing here regarding your safety, your freedom of choice of lifestyle and your human rights."

He also asked for further contact details so that the people who he forwarded my message to could get in touch with me directly.

So far, I've been contacted by the office of my MP, to give me the contact details of the local councillor, seeing as she has recently replaced the last councillor and might not have had the message. They wished me luck.

I got a surprise knock on the door the next day, from the local police officers who were looking for more details. I couldn't really give them any, but they told me that I could give them vague information and they might be able to help anyway.

I've been contacted by the local housing office, whose equality and diversity policy has broken links (I intend to call them on it shortly) but I've not talked to them in detail yet. (coming soon)

I've not heard from the councillor again yet.