Scot's blue badge Bill

Is a Bill that would see motorists fined for misusing accessible parking bays in Scotland really needed or, asks Helen Smith, would it actually work?

Jackie Baillie is a Labour member of the Scottish Parliament. She came up with the idea for the Disabled Persons Parking Bill (Scotland) four years ago after being approached by one of her constituents who was having trouble parking in the disabled bay outside his house.

If passed, the Bill will require local authorities in Scotland to make all existing residential disabled parking bays legally enforceable. At present almost 85 per cent of residential disabled parking bays in Scotland are advisory and therefore anyone can park in them without the risk of being penalised.

The Bill also requires local authorities to contact the owners or operators of private carparks, including supermarkets and out of town shopping centres, to negotiate an agreement to make disabled parking spaces at these carparks enforceable. Jackie Baillie has described the measures as: “A small but important step in the right direction for disabled people in Scotland.”

Many blue badge holders north of the border agree. But the problem is that the Scottish Parliament has no power to pass legislation requiring private business to take certain actions; that power rests at Westminster.

Grahame Lawson from the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee said: “The only reason this Bill is needed is because of the failings of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. Businesses already have a duty to ensure disabled people can access their goods and services, but this is clearly not working.”

Although the Bill received a lot of support from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities who said they “Welcome the principle of the Bill”, there were some reservations from local authorities who felt that they just wouldn’t have the resources to enforce the bays.

To make residential bays legally enforceable they currently need to be supported by a Traffic Regulation Order and getting one of these can be an expensive and long-drawn out process. A new order would be required every time an application was made for a space. But because the road markings used to designate a space are defined in The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 (TSRGD), many council representatives feel that the best way forward is to revise the TSRGD instead, so that the disabled bay marking itself carried statutory backing in the same way as is already the case with the bus stop clearway and yellow box junction markings. These are legally enforceable. The problem is that the powers to change the TSRGD again lie with Westminster and not Edinburgh.

The general principles of the Bill were passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament in a debate last November and it is expected to pass the remaining parliamentary stages early in 2009.

• Helen Smith is director of policy and campaigns for the disabled motorists’ charity Mobilise, and is a member of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee