Supermarket sweep

As Baywatch partners stand by to launch the 2009 Baywatch survey, Helen Smith asks for your help

Recently Sainsbury’s announced that they will be issuing £50 penalty charges to drivers who misuse disabled and parent and child parking bays in Sainsbury’s car parks. In order to do this they have recruited ten “car park crusaders” to monitor unauthorised parking in Blue Badge and Parent and Child bays across 400 Sainsbury's car parks in England, Scotland and Wales.

Gavin Clarke, feasibility manager in charge of Sainsbury’s car parks, said “We’ve designated these spaces for Blue Badge holders and parents and children so they can shop with us easily and conveniently.

“We’ve tried gentle persuasion but we know that Bay Watch Bikers are really effective in deterring drivers from taking parking spaces designed for people who really need them.”

Sainsbury’s announcement is yet another success for the Baywatch campaign. After the last survey was carried out in 2007 Sainsbury’s announced a trial at 61 stores within the M25. This saw a band of Bay Watch Bikers, authorised to issue £50 penalty charge notices to vehicles contravening the parking conditions, travelling between stores on motor bikes.

The results from the trial showed a significant reduction in the number of parking charge notices issued monthly over the first 12 months. Ian Macrae, editor of Disability Now magazine said “Baywatch has always known that fining is the only way to stop selfish motorists from abusing disabled bays so I’m really pleased that Sainsbury’s has now extended this scheme to even more supermarkets.

“However, the Baywatch campaign won’t stop until fining is implemented in all supermarket car parks”.

When the Baywatch campaign was launched in 2002 by Disability Now, Mobilise and the British Polio Fellowship, not one supermarket was committed to ensuring that disabled bays were not abused. The first survey revealed that one in four disabled bays at supermarkets were being abused but it wasn’t until 2007 that Asda became the first supermarket to implement fining for disabled bay abusers.

The number of people abusing disabled bays hasn’t improved much since the first survey of 2002 but since the last survey was carried out in 2007, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco have all introduced fining in at least some of their stores.

Asda is so far the only supermarket to commit to fining at all their stores but Baywatch hopes that the results from this year’s survey will prove conclusively that only by fining can inconsiderate motorists be stopped from parking in disabled bays, and Sainsbury’s and Tesco
will extend fining to many more of their stores.

Although Morrisons had the lowest levels of abuse in its stores in 2007, it has not introduced fining. It will be interesting to see if its car parks still have the lowest levels of abuse.

To find out if enforcement really does work, we need your help. Enclosed in this month’s copy of Disability Now is a Baywatch survey. It will only take you a minute or two to fill in and you can do it when you do your weekly shop.

All you need to do is note down the number of disabled bays, the number of vehicles parked in them and the number not displaying badges.

This year we are also asking you to spot if any enforcement is in operation.

It is as simple as that. You can then either send your survey back in the post or enter your results yourself online by visiting http://tiny.cc/baywatchsurvey