Blue badge cheats get fined - and a criminal record warning

08/05/2008

Recent editions of the Mature Times have carried considerable correspondence from readers about blue badges - as well as about those who routinely misuse disabled parking spaces. One reader, aged 81, who was refused a blue badge despite three heart attacks and diabetic neuropathy, tragically died of a heart attack as he struggled up a hill to attend his beloved college course. 

 

So it should come as good news to know that people who abuse the disabled badge parking system are now facing heavy fines and  possibly a criminal record following three successful prosecutions by Lambeth Council for blue badge fraud.

 

 

Blue badges are usually provided to older and/or disabled people to allow them to park near amenities, but all too often the system  abused, and a thriving trade exists in stolen blue badges, which are usually obtained by breaking into disabled peoples' cars. But following covert surveillance operations by Lambeth Council, three people were prosecuted at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court on March 31.

 

 

In one case, a man from Surrey was caught by covert surveillance officers using his wife’s disabled badge no less than 12 times. He failed to attend the court hearing, but was fined £100 for each offence, as well as being ordered to pay costs of £200 and a victim surcharge of £15.

 

 

Then a biochemist of Kings College Hospital entered a written guilty plea to nine offences after she was caught misusing her husband’s disabled badge to park while at the Hospital. She was fined £900 with £200 costs and was also ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £15. 

Finally, a clinical clerk from London was also fined £400 with costs of £300 after being caught misusing a deceased person’s disabled badge to park while she went to work at St Thomas’s Hospital. 

Tim Jackson, Assistant Director, Street Management, at Lambeth Council, said: “People who abuse the system in this way selfishly deprive genuine blue badge users from the parking spaces that are reserved for them. Lambeth will continue to work to protect the rights of older and disabled people by running covert monitoring operations to catch the cheats, and we will always seek to prosecute offenders.

“These prosecutions send a clear message that the courts take these kinds of offences extremely seriously.”

Let's hope that the action taken by Lambeth council may serve as a warning for all blue badge fraudsters across the UK ...