Londoners happy to take parking from disabled

12 December 2008

It’s perfectly fine to park in a disabled person's parking space without the required Blue Badge, according to two-thirds of Londoners.

In fact, 26 per cent of London’s Blue Badge holders appear to agree, noted a recent survey done for the Department of Transport.

The main reason holders lend out their Blue Badges to friends and relatives, said 44 per cent, is because they feel “it doesn't harm anyone”. Yet 74 per cent of holders said they can’t always park near their destination.

The London data makes the capital the worst offenders nationally of the parking concession scheme for disabled people, said the department which wants to highlight the issue ahead of forthcoming changes.

The Blue Badge scheme was introduced 37 years ago and is used by 2.3 million disabled people in England. Planned changes to the scheme announced in October means more people will be eligible for a badge. These include severely disabled armed forces personnel, veterans, young children with certain disabilities and some people with temporary mobility problems or severe mental impairments.

"It is inconsiderate to abuse Blue Badges,” said Luke Hamill, a wheelchair user since a 1990 road traffic accident and who played CAD Dean McVerry in television series The Bill for two and a half years.

“Many disabled people are unable to use normal width spaces or spaces that are a distance away from the destination. If someone is fraudulently using a Blue Badge space, a person with a genuine need is unable to use the space,” added Hamill who recently joined the cast of Casualty as Alex Trueman.

Lara Masters, a judge on Britain's Missing Top Model and former co-presenter of That's Esther with Esther Rantzen said: "It's about respecting the fact disabled people have rights. You wouldn't just cut in front of someone in a queue for parking space and take another person's space, so why do you think it's OK to take a space from a disabled person? When you use a disabled person's parking space, you're denying them basic rights and treating them like a second class citizen."