Blue badge blues

With the government consulting on changes to the blue badge scheme, Paul Carter took advantage of a rare opportunity to join police officers on an operation tackling blue badge fraud and misuse

When the call came in, the three of us broke into a run. We were a hundred yards or so away from the car and were not sure whether the driver might have already driven off.

When we reached the Alfa Romeo, there was still no sign of the driver. The car was still displaying the badge that had been reported as stolen.

A council tow-truck was called to remove the car, which was also ticketed.

The driver subsequently appeared at the car pound, and was arrested, while a second stolen badge was found in the boot of the vehicle. He was later found guilty of handling stolen goods and fined £400.

The episode was the highlight of a day spent with the Metropolitan Police on an operation tackling blue badge fraud and misuse.

It was a rare opportunity to see how the scheme is operating “on the ground”, and how effective the police and traffic wardens’ enforcement powers are in practice.

Centred around the Wood Green and Green Lanes areas of Haringey in north London, Operation Blue Badge saw eight officers patrolling areas known to have a high concentration of vehicles parked with blue badges.

The operation was on two fronts: checking that any badges had not been lost or stolen, and ensuring that those badges were being used by the registered holders.

We teamed up with Inspector Mark Hembury, the Haringey borough safer neighbourhood inspector, who was leading the operation, and our first area of patrol was a residential district close to the main High Road in Wood Green.

It quickly became clear that the way the scheme is run makes it difficult for the authorities to police and enforce efficiently and easily.

Despite eligibility criteria coming from the DfT, the badges themselves are issued by local authorities. For officers to check if a permit is valid, and if it has been lost or stolen, the officer has to telephone the blue badge department of the relevant council. With 32 London boroughs, and some streets containing as
many as ten cars displaying badges, this proved time-consuming and frustrating.

Our operation was run in conjunction with the council which, along with some neighbouring boroughs, ensured extra staff were on hand to handle the extra calls; but when contacting councils from further afield, the process did not always run smoothly.

“It is frustrating,” says Inspector Hembury. “We do make neighbouring boroughs aware of the operations but it’s not practical to let everyone know.”

The government plans to create a national framework for sharing information between agencies, although “not necessarily” a stand alone national database.

A DfT spokesman says a national database is “one of a number of options we are looking at”. Despite the obvious gains to the users of the blue badge scheme, he says, there would also be costs to those that run the scheme and questions about data security.

Labour MP Anne Begg, herself a blue badge-user and president of The Blue Badge Network, says. “One of the frustrations and difficulties I have from my point of view as a legislator is that it is not a national scheme. Eligibility is national, but implementation is down to individual local authorities. The reason is that local authorities control their own parking and so on,” she says. “I think we should be looking at national enforcement. There’s not an easy solution, but I know that The Blue Badge Network is very keen on uniformity.”

Another striking fact from the Haringey operation is the sheer number of badges in circulation in such a small area of London – around 7,500 blue badges in Haringey alone – while according to figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), there are now approximately 2.3 million blue badges issued across England, the equivalent of 45 permits per thousand people.

In 2006/2007, almost 230 were reported stolen in Haringey, an average of more than four a week. Blue badge theft is clearly a major problem.

Inspector Hembury concedes that it is unlikely that thefts of blue badges from vehicles will be eliminated completely. He believes that the most effective tactic would be high visibility enforcement and public awareness, such as initiatives like Operation Blue Badge.

“We want to make it clear that if you’re misusing a blue badge in Haringey, you should expect to be stopped and checked,” he says.

Perhaps surprisingly, those people who were with the vehicles during the operation were not at all upset by being asked to produce their badges for inspection.

In fact, most were happy that the police were tackling the problem, not only of lost and stolen badges, but of misused badges.

Inspector Hembury says: “You’ll often get people who say that they’re doing the shopping for the badge holder, who’s at home. But if the person who the badge is registered to is not in the vehicle, then the badge should not be being used.”

Proposals in the new government consultation include giving traffic wardens and parking attendants the power to confiscate badges. 

Police officers have had this power since 2006, but the bureaucratic process after confiscating a badge can prove frustrating.

After confiscating a badge, it is returned to the issuing authority with details of why it was removed. However, some councils operate on a “three strikes” basis before permanently confiscating the badge.

“It’s difficult enough to catch somebody in the act misusing a badge once, let alone three times, so it can be quite frustrating,” says Inspector Hembury.

There is always the risk, of course, that the legitimate owner of the badge could be unaware of the misuse, for instance by a relative, and therefore become an innocent victim of the confiscation.

Begg says: “I think that on the whole what they are proposing is good, things like giving the power to traffic wardens to confiscate badges, and I think that might make things a lot quicker. At the moment the inspection system operates on a three strikes and out basis. You have to misuse it three times, and of course it should be confiscated (immediately) if it’s being misused.”

Over the course of the day, seven people were found to be misusing badges, and all of the badges were seized, with fixed penalty notices issued.

As well as the Alfa Romeo driver, another man was arrested and subsequently cautioned, for using a badge that belonged to his mother, who had died three months previously.

“In many circumstances we would issue a fixed penalty notice where a badge has been misused, but where there has been a prolonged or deliberate attempt to mislead, then we will arrest them for misrepresentation under the Fraud Act as they have been obtaining free parking by deception,” says Inspector Hembury.

Another element of the government’s “preliminary thinking” is a redesign of the badge itself, creating a “secure and machine-readable badge”.

I ask Inspector Hembury if, in his experience, forged or counterfeit badges are a problem, and if measures such as holograms would aid in enforcement. “It’s not something that we come across that regularly, certainly not on the scale of the theft of badges from vehicles,” he says.

From an observer’s perspective, it’s difficult to see what real benefits machine readable badges will bring, as the vast majority of badges that were checked on our operation were behind the windscreens of parked, locked cars.

Anne Begg says it is vital that blue badge-users get a better service. They need the system to have integrity. She adds: “They are the ones who have the problems because of the minority misusing the badges.”

• The DfT’s consultation on its blue badge review runs until 17 April. Visit www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/open/bluebadgereformstrategy

• The Commons transport committee is also conducting a short inquiry into the blue badge scheme, which it hopes will inform the government’s review