My day with the Blue Badge fraud busters

One day I would like to see fraud and abuse being tackled by every local authority across the UK

Disabled Motoring UK (DMUK) has been campaigning for local authorities to enforce the Blue Badge scheme for many years. Blue Badge enforcement is not just about giving tickets to people who have displayed their badge incorrectly, overstayed on a yellow line or parked without a Blue Badge, it’s about making proper checks on all badges being displayed to ensure they are being used by the holder. 

Although figures released earlier this year by the Local Government Association (LGA) showed that Blue Badge fraud prosecutions have doubled over three years, there were still only 686 successful council prosecutions in England in 2013.

Considering that Manchester City Council alone achieved more than 500 prosecutions over the last five years, these figures are really not very good. With 326 districts in England, I would have expected the prosecution rate to be considerably higher. Although some authorities are working very hard to combat fraud and abuse others are doing absolutely nothing. I would like to see fraud and abuse being tackled by every local authority across the UK. 

One authority that is doing its utmost to combat this anti-social crime is Portsmouth City Council. The Portsmouth parking team recently invited me to join them on an operation called "Street Smart", which is where every Blue Badge being used on a particular day is checked to ensure it is both genuine and being used by the holder. 

The day started with a briefing from Steve Hewett, who is the council’s parking investigation officer, who told everyone exactly what their areas were going to be and how it was all going to work. 

As well as members of the Blue Badge team, there were uniformed civil enforcement officers (CEOs), undercover officers, tow truck operators, people from Trading Standards. Bailiffs from Whyte & Co were involved because as well as checking Blue Badges, persistent evaders who have a large number of unpaid penalty charge notices (PCNs) were also being targeted. 

In addition, the operation was being filmed by two BBC programmes, the local news and for a programme called Street Patrol, which is being aired later this year.

Once everyone was fully briefed I headed off to Stanhope Road car park, which was the base of the operation. It wasn’t long before the first call came through saying a persistent evader’s vehicle had been spotted, parked as usual without paying. The car was not registered to any address, which is probably why the owner thought he could get away with never paying. The person had already racked up a debt of £1,825. However, his car was swiftly towed away and the bailiffs were waiting to greet him on his return home since to get his car back he’d have to provide a full address. 

Soon after this car had been towed away, I was alerted to another vehicle. This was a new Mercedes displaying a Blue Badge, supposedly belonging to an 85-year-old man. When the officer was making her checks on the badge it came back as a badge that had been reported stolen last year from Southampton. This car was issued with a PCN and then towed away. 

Within minutes of being towed, Steve Hewett received a phone call from a very angry woman demanding to know where her car was. She had parked in the disabled bay with her boyfriend to use the gym. They were both fit, able and in their 20s. She was invited to the council officers where she was interviewed under caution. She told Steve Hewett that her boyfriend had told her to use the badge, and he later admitted to buying the badge from a man in a pub. To make it worse for them, there were camera crews waiting when they came out of the building and the boyfriend told the reporter, using very colourful language, that he didn’t care. This is now likely to be shown at his trial to show he had no remorse.

During the course of the day badge numbers were being radioed through to the council offices and the whereabouts of badge holders checked. One of the problems with the checks was that there was no phone number given for many of the holders, which meant a check could only be made if the holder returned to the vehicle. 

When the whereabouts of one holder was checked, they said they were at home and their husband was using the badge to go to the opticians. This vehicle could not be towed as it was a Motability vehicle. However, the officer had to wait by the vehicle for the driver to return, as the driver had left all the windows open so anyone could have stolen the badge. When he returned he admitted he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he said his wife was very ill. The badge was confiscated and he was given a caution at the side of the road.

The last vehicle I encountered on Operation Street Smart was an Audi where the badge holder was asleep at home and the holder’s husband was using the badge. This vehicle had parked under a bridge so a different type of tow truck had to be used as the car had to be dragged out rather than lifted. It had taken quite a long time to arrange the new truck to come and within minutes of the vehicle going the owner turned up insisting the badge holder was at the doctors. It seems that having seen the commotion around his car he’d phoned home and told his wife’s carer to get her out of bed, get in a taxi and get to the doctors. Unfortunately for him, taxi records and the doctor’s appointments system are likely to show otherwise.

I was only able to witness a small number of the people caught misusing badges that day. However, during the course of this operation Portsmouth City Council CEOs carried out 231 visual inspections of disabled badges and 91 public interventions whereby members of the public were requested to show their badge.  

The results of this operation were that one badge was found to be stolen, one was from a deceased person, one had expired and nine were not being used by the holder. All 12 badges were seized, adding to Portsmouth’s total of 79 disabled badged seized since January.

To date, Portsmouth City Council has brought 37 cases before the courts. 

Disabled badge abuse and this type of offending is viewed seriously by the courts, which is reflected in the wide range of sentencing penalties; including community work, financial penalty, and restriction of liberty by electronic tagging. The largest single financial penalty imposed by the courts was a fine of £3,000.

Portsmouth parking operations manager Michael Robinson, who led the operation, says: “Portsmouth City Council is committed to using resources to protect the integrity of the Blue Badge scheme. Our dedicated investigator and his team will continue to make it as inconvenient as possible to abuse the Blue Badge scheme and disabled bays, and to bring to court many of those we find doing so. Portsmouth are willing to help and advice any local authority if they seek to address this national problem.”

I was quite shocked by the number of people wilfully abusing this scheme to the detriment of others. I hope that local authorities currently not enforcing will take inspiration from Portsmouth City Council because until there is a robust system in place across the whole of the UK Blue Badge abusers will continue to escape prosecution. 

Helen Dolphin is director of policy & campaigns at Disabled Motoring UK

www.disabledmotoring.org