Amendments to the Blue Badge Scheme to come into force in April.

The measures, which will start to come into force from April this year, include:

• Providing local authorities with an on-the-spot power to recover badges that have been cancelled and misused;
  • Not before time.This meets with our approval
• Shared administration between authorities - including an online application facility - resulting in faster renewals, reduced abuse and operational efficiency savings of up to £20 million a year;
  • Can't see a lot wrong with this either.
• Wider use of independent mobility assessments to determine eligibility, including where previously that assessment was carried out by a GP; and support for this by giving local authorities control of National Health Service spend on Blue Badge assessments;
  • This we would like to draw considerable issue to
  • 1) Assessments are to be carried out by Social Services rather than GP's. May we ask what medical knowledge Social Services have?
  • 2) Appeals to be heard by independent authorities. If this follows the government guide lines and is done by qualified physiotherapists, then fine. Our fear is that it will handed over to unelected foreign, so called, but completely unregulated companies, what then?
• The replacement of handwritten badges with standard electronic ones which are harder to alter and forge;
  • That's just fine, we can see advantages in this.
• Extending the scheme to more disabled children under three years of age and severely disabled Armed Forces personnel and veterans; and removing residency requirements for disabled service personnel and their families who are posted overseas on UK bases:
  • Not before time. Finally though, these changes rely on the very people who have caused all the problems with the Blue Badge suddenly getting it right. Some few councils, and you can count the ones I mean on the fingers of one hand, have done their best and I expect them to continue to do so, but what about the rest? There is no compunction on councils doing anything to bring these, by and large, improvements about. We suspect that many councils will simply put the change over to Social Services control into effect, charge the new rate of £10 to renew your badge, and continue to do nothing about enforcing the correct use of the badges. The new rules do nothing about the situation where every council decides what the local regulations should be, so that disabled people have no idea whether they are complying with local by-laws or not.

  We do believe that if councils run the new scheme the way that is intended that it should at least get rid of the people who habitually park their cars in disabled parking, and sit reading their newspaper while their perfectly able bodied carer does the shopping, and every other disabled person sits and fumes at their complete selfishness. It should stop the carer and care home driver who thinks that he/she is entitled to do their private shopping on the care homes 'Blue Badge' or their cared fors 'Blue Badge'. And it should stop the van driver who thinks that he is the only person with a job and is thus entitled to use disabled parking.

  Now wouldn't that be utopia? I am not holding my breath in anticipation though.

John Killick
Hon. Sec. Disabled Motorists Federation