Treasured map

A government website provides information on blue badge spaces across the UK at the click of a mouse. Now it just needs some fine-tuning, says Helen Smith

I have to admit that my usual method of finding an accessible parking space is just to rely on luck.

However, having just experienced a parking nightmare in Oxford, I will never again leave parking to chance.

In Oxford, the streets are either so narrow that there is no space to park, or there are loading bans so you can’t use your blue badge to park on the street. Had I planned my parking as carefully as my journey, I could have saved no end of strife.

For some time, I have known about the government’s Directgov website, which has a map that allows you to find blue badge parking spaces in towns and cities across the UK. However, I had not taken the trouble to visit this website before. So to try and prevent any parking nightmares happening again, I decided it was time to test it out.

The easiest way to find the map is to visit www.direct.gov.uk/bluebadgemap. If, like me, you try searching through the Directgov website, it can take quite some time to find.

To test out the map, I decided to search Oxford city centre for places to park, to see whether the map would have made my previous parking experience any easier.

The map was simple to use and all I had to do was type in “Oxford”. I then clicked on the “facilities” button and ticked the box to choose “all parking spaces” and the map was instantly covered in symbols, each of which marked a parking space. There is also an option to choose parking for three hours, four hours, unlimited, or all three.

I’d been visiting the town hall in Oxford, but the map showed there weren’t any spaces close enough for me to use. As an alternative, I selected “carparks”, to see if any of these were any closer.

However, although the map told me where they were and how many bays they had, it didn’t tell me if there were barriers into the carparks, or if I would have to use a payment machine, both of which would have made them inaccessible for me. With no bays nearby and not enough information about the carparks, my only option left was on-street parking. Unfortunately, the map couldn’t tell me where there were double or single yellow lines.

I spoke to Ian Thomas, who works in the disabled persons’ section at Directgov, and told him about the issues I had with the site – mainly that there just wasn’t enough information.

He told me: “There are going to be some significant improvements. In the new year, we will be doing some user-testing to determine what improvements there need to be.” One of these, he said, would be more information about carparks.

But this map isn’t just about parking, it’s about helping disabled people have better access and information.

Other options you can choose include finding an accessible loo, railway station and accessible beach.

So although the Blue Badge Map doesn’t have all the information yet, it is certainly a good starting point and I will definitely use it again in the future.

• 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