Baywatch is back!

It never really went away, but now, with more supermarkets trialling bay-abuse penalties, Disability Now, Mobilise and the British Polio Fellowship are gearing up to test their effectiveness, says Helen Smith

When Baywatch carried out its last survey on bay abuse in supermarket car parks two years ago, the results
were disheartening.

On average, one in five accessible bays at supermarkets was being used by someone without a Blue Badge.

This was the same level of abuse recorded in 2005 and not much better than the result from the first survey in 2002 where one in four bays was being abused.

Armed with these results Baywatch (a campaigning body formed by Disability Now, Mobilise and the British Polio Fellowship) asked the supermarkets what they were going to do to improve the situation.

Back in summer 2007 ASDA said it had to be “quite gentle [with enforcement] because we don’t want to upset anybody.” Sainsbury’s response was slightly better and said: “We know that people care about it and therefore we are going to do something about it.” Most disappointing was the response from Tesco which, despite having extremely high levels of abuse at its stores, said it had “no plans to introduce stricter enforcement ” as it “preferred the carrot not the stick”.

Of all the four supermarkets surveyed in 2007 Morrison’s came out on top with the lowest level of abuse. But like Tesco it said it had no plans to introduce fining.

I’m glad to say a lot has changed in two years. ASDA decided that it didn’t mind upsetting people after all and in September 2007 it started a trial in Manchester where bay abusers were given a £60 penalty charge.

Several months later this trial proved such a success that it was extended countrywide.

Although ASDA was the first to introduce penalty charges Sainsbury’s was quick to follow suit. It now also issues Civil Parking Notices (CPN) to people who abuse bays. Not all its stores do this but it’s an effective first step to ensure that disabled people have access to the goods and services they’re entitled to.

More recently, Tesco has taken its first tentative steps. A trial at six Tesco stores has been carried out using a specially designed CCTV bollard to enforce disabled bays. These bollards are positioned at the end of disabled bays.

A camera inside the bollard records the vehicle’s registration plate and checks that there’s a badge displayed in the windscreen. If a badge is displayed, the car is registered as authorised. If it isn’t displayed the keeper of the vehicle can be automatically issued with either a warning notice or a CPN.

This trial is now being extended to more stores but this is still just the tip of the iceberg. I asked Tesco what else it was doing to enforce its bays. A Tesco spokesman told me: “Tesco is very committed to making sure disabled people can park in the disabled bays and we do issue penalty charges at some stores. Our new store design is such that the ATM machines are well away from the disabled parking as we found this was one of the main reasons for abuse.”