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Sting reveals stolen and misused parking badges

March 31st, 2008 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 1 Comment · Life

Yes. I was a little excited by that headline too but the story in the Argus turned out to have nothing to do with the singer from The Police and everything to do with the Sussex Police and Brighton & Hove council instead.

What happened was that they did a check on the blue badges of cars parked in disabled spaces in Brighton and found of the 991 cars they checked that 730 were absolutely fine. Of the rest 47 were either expired, stolen, or being used by the wrong person and the remaining 214 are still being checked.

So in a random check in one town, ((OK. City )) nearly 5% of all the disabled badges were being used fraudulently as a minimum, and that could rise to anything up to 26% depending on the investigations into the other 214. Let’s say 10% as a conservative estimate.

Its not surprising really, in fact the only real surprise is seeing the police make a concerted effort to do something. Everyone knows this happens, and has done for a long time, although resident parking schemes and other parking restrictions have tempted more people to do it. The real question now is what will happen to those who were found to be abusing a disabled permit, or having a forged one.

A local disabled driver told me that the maximum fine is £1,000. Something like that would be a deterrent. A £30 or £60 parking ticket would not do much to put anyone off borrowing a neighbour’s blue badge.

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