Reflections: the life of Sir Peter Baldwin

Arthritis Care was sad to hear the news that Sir Peter Baldwin KCB died on 9 May 2010. The senior civil servant was a wartime code-breaker and more recently, a passionate mobility activist.

He was one of the few who took the time to understand the needs of the various disabled communities. He was chair at RADAR: The Disability Network for several years and chair of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) where he personally helped to redesign the black taxi cabs to make them accessible to disabled users and played a part in the lowering bus floors.

He was incredibly committed to the cause of disabled people, but more specifically people with mobility problems.

Neil Betteridge, chief executive of Arthritis Care commented: 'The recently announced death of Sir Peter Baldwin marks a sad loss, for me personally, but for people with arthritis generally. Peter was a great friend to Arthritis Care.

'For the last 50 years or so, he has campaigned for a better deal for people with mobility problems. I worked with him at RADAR in the 1990s when I was a staff member and he was the chair.

'Arthritis Care was – and still is – a member of RADAR, partly because of the impact Peter and the people he inspired, such as Bert Massie, had on the lives of people with arthritis. He was also the founding chair of DPTAC, advising the Secretary of State on all manner of problems faced by disabled people, accompanied by the solutions which he so often charmed or forced into law.

'I was proud to be his successor at DPTAC some years later, and I hope that at least some of the many things I learnt from Peter are in some way still being put to use to help the people he so ably championed throughout his life.'

Read Sir Peter Baldwin obituary in the Guardian.