From ‘Disabled Motoring’
The latest Blue Badge statistics released from the Department for Transport (DfT) show a 49% decrease in prosecutions for fraud and misuse of the scheme. Only 698 prosecutions took place between 1st April 2020 and 31st March 2021, compared with the previous year’s figure of 1,429 prosecutions.
The number of Blue Badge holders has also decreased by 3.8% with a total of 2.35million Blue Badge holders in England on 31st March 2021, that is 92,000 fewer Blue Badge holders. Between 1 April 2020 and 31st March 2021 only 824,000 Blue Badges were issued by local authorities, this is 142,000 fewer than the previous year and a fall of 14.7%.
The fall in prosecutions and general numbers of Blue Badges has been partially attributed to repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. The DfT stated: “The drop in prosecuted badges may relate to the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on citizen behaviour, local authority enforcement practices, and availability of resources.”
BLUE BADGE ENFORCEMENT
Disabled Motoring UK continues to be disappointed in the attitude of most local authorities toward misuse of the Blue Badge Scheme. The percentage of local authorities that do have a ‘yes’ policy to enforcing the Blue Badge scheme through prosecution has risen this year from 69% to 74% of local authorities. On the surface this statistic seems positive, but of the local authorities that have a ‘yes’ policy only 44% of them actually pursued any prosecutions on offenders. This is alarming and we firmly believe that there is no point having this policy if a local authority is not willing to act in accordance with it.
Of the 698 prosecution that did take place in 2020/21, 454 (65%)of them took place in London. Drilling down further 119 were in one particular borough, Lambeth. That equates to 17% of all prosecutions taking place in one borough of London. This means that if you live outside London you are very unlikely to see any enforcement of the Blue Badge scheme.
We would like to congratulate those few local authorites that are prosecuting misuse of Blue Badges and give them further thanks in doing so during the turbulent times of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Heidi Turner, Communications and Campaigns Director, said: “We appreciate that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused problems with prosecuting misuse of the Blue Badge scheme. However the already low prosecution figures have fallen of a cliff edge in this most recent set of statistics released by DfT. We hope that next year the numbers will have risen again and that local authorities will make a renewed commitment to policing the scheme so it remains fit for purpose. We are pleased to see that more local authorities are adopting a policy to enforce the scheme through prosecuting abusers, but if they are going to adopt such policies they need to be acted upon. The charity is tired of these ‘on-paper only’ policies that are just lip service in supporting their disabled residents and visitors.”