Disability Badges

[woodstainwilly]

In our town,parking is unlimited for badge holders. That is fine except
all the proscribed spaces are full by 8am each day and remain so until
around 5pm.This gives genuine disabled shoppers no alternative but
to park on yellow lines and cause obstructions.
Not good me thinks.

Have you stopped to consider who maybe using then? How about disabled workers?

These parking bays are in a shopping zone. Not a car park for workers. Why should disabled
workers be able to park free but able bodied drivers have to pay the long stay fees.
Unfair which ever way you look at it.

 

[Gary]

Why should disabled shoppers park free?

It's being stopped in a lot of places.

 

[JakeS]

Yes.

Depends on the car park - the one next to my office is a privately-owned shopping centre car park but they have one of those big "terms and conditions of parking here" signs up - apparently to validate the £120 fine if you stay more than two hours - and one of the stipulations on that is that people parking in disabled bays must display a valid disabled badge, with the same £120 fine in effect. I imagine that car parks which don't have massive penalty fines in effect for the slightest offence probably don't have such a motivation to police their disabled bays...

 

[theartfulbodger]

Good advice from the money saving guru here:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclai ... ng-tickets

:ho2

 

[Gary]

Yes.

Depends on the car park - the one next to my office is a privately-owned shopping centre car park but they have one of those big "terms and conditions of parking here" signs up - apparently to validate the £120 fine if you stay more than two hours - and one of the stipulations on that is that people parking in disabled bays must display a valid disabled badge, with the same £120 fine in effect. I imagine that car parks which don't have massive penalty fines in effect for the slightest offence probably don't have such a motivation to police their disabled bays...

You don't have a badge and They invoice you for £120. You don't have to pay it as they can't legally enforce it.

 

[chunkolini]

Good grief.

 

[Mark A]

Not too long ago I was sat in the van in a council carpark opposite the disabled bays while I waited for someone. Right in front of me a Vauxhall Zafira pulled up in a disabled bay and the woman driving mustn't have been even 25. She got out her kids from the back, who then started to run between the cars and she ran after them. She was in no way disabled, but had a disabled parking permit?

Our neighbour where we used to live cared for his disabled sister, who lived with him and his wife. I don't know how he swindled it, but both him and his wife had disability cars, as did his son. They even put thousands towards upgrading the cars! But.... the disabled sister was taken absolutely everywhere by taxi (of course, paid for by the kind taxpayers), and the cars where used by them for their own personal use. I don't know how they got away with it, but they did - for years and years.

Something's a tad wrong with the system.

 

[Gary]

Up to them what they spend their mobility payments on. Sadly it can be booze and ****.

 

[doorframe]

This is an emotional subject, guaranteed to stir up a hornet's nest. It would seem that whomever you speak to knows somebody that 'has', but doesn't appear to 'deserve' a Disabled badge.

A good friend of mine is a haemophiliac. He is far fitter, stronger and able than me. He qualifies for a Disabled Badge and a Motorbility vehicle which he uses as his 'company car' (he is self employed). I thought there was a mileage limit but he does around 25,000 miles per annum. Has done for at least the last 10yrs.

Don't know whether he 'deserves' it or not.

My Father died 7yrs ago. For his last 3yrs he could not walk more than 20yrds due to his heart condition and other medical conditions, and for years before that he couldn't walk much further. We tried for years to get him a Disabled Badge and/or Dissability Allowance. Turned down flat every time. Finally Age Concern got involved and although he still didn't get a Disabled Badge he did get Disability Allowance. Didn't help much as he died very soon after.

I think the 'system' could be fairer.

Roy

 

[Digit]

My wife has a 'Blue Badge' and receives a level of mobility allowance, the money is not 'compensation' for her limited mobilty but to fund the additional expenses incurred.
She is not visibly disabled in that she is not yet in a wheel chair nor relying on sticks, but steps/stairs she cannot manage, she walks slowly and cannot board a bus without help etc, so neither of us would say that somebody 'does not look disabled.'
But what will piss both of us off is vehicles parked in a disabled bay that do not have a badge.

Roy.

 

[JakeS]

You don't have a badge and They invoice you for £120. You don't have to pay it as they can't legally enforce it.

I don't actually plan on parking in the shopping car park's disabled bays - even if I were that shameless, there's an office car park I can leave my car in which is surprisingly actually closer to the office!

But as it goes, my understanding of the matter is that this isn't the case at all. It's private land, and the public has no right to be there, with or without their car; they are admitting the individual on the condition that the individual agrees with their terms, and their terms state that if the individual leaves their car in the wrong place or for too long, they're liable for a penalty of £120. It's a contractual matter rather than a civil parking infringement, but if you brought your car onto the public land, the argument goes, you agreed to the contract. They have put the signs up very clearly at all entrances and throughout the car park, and the terms aren't really unreasonable; simply that you don't leave your car there more than 2 hours and don't park in the disabled bays without a badge, so from my (admittedly limited, I'm no lawyer) understanding, I don't see anything in particular which could render the contract void.

Or would you argue that there's no legal need to buy a ticket in pay-and-display car parks, or nothing wrong with not paying in a ticket-entry car park and demanding that they release your car which they have no right to trap behind mechanical barriers?

 

[Gary]

You don't have a badge and They invoice you for £120. You don't have to pay it as they can't legally enforce it.

I don't actually plan on parking in the shopping car park's disabled bays - even if I were that shameless, there's an office car park I can leave my car in which is surprisingly actually closer to the office!

But as it goes, my understanding of the matter is that this isn't the case at all. It's private land, and the public has no right to be there, with or without their car; they are admitting the individual on the condition that the individual agrees with their terms, and their terms state that if the individuaal leaves their car in the wrong place or for too long, they're liable for a penalty of £120. It's a contractual matter rather than a civil parking infringement, but if you brought your car onto the public land, the argument goes, you agreed to the contract. They have put the signs up very clearly at all entrances and throughout the car park, and the terms aren't really unreasonable; simply that you don't leave your car there more than 2 hours and don't park in the disabled bays without a badge, so from my (admittedly limited, I'm no lawyer) understanding, I don't see anything in particular which could render the contract void.

Or would you argue that there's no legal need to buy a ticket in pay-and-display car parks, or nothing wrong with not paying in a ticket-entry car park and demanding that they release your car which they have no right to trap behind mechanical barriers?

Exactly its private land, the contract as you put it cannot be enforced. The only parking tickets you legally have to pay are those issued by the council or the police.

 

[devonwoody]

Or licensed clampers?

 

[JakeS]

Exactly its private land, the contract as you put it cannot be enforced.

Could you explain why, please? It seems to me perfectly reasonable that I would have to agree to someone's terms and conditions to park on their land, and having agreed, I would be bound by contract law to keep up my end of the contract. Or is there some nuance of English law I'm missing which says that contracts are only valid when agreed to on public land?!

Along similar lines: if you're suggesting that there's some legal loophole which means that parking in particular cannot be regulated unless on public land, are you also suggesting that it's perfectly legal to park in a pay-and-display car park without paying?

 

[DIY Stew]

My first post was removed by Mod, so I will try again but aim this at all the people who have expressed concern over who should have and who shouldn't have a Disability Parking Disc or Motability car.

Report them to the appropriate authorities instead of complaining here.

Stew

 

[Gary]

Exactly its private land, the contract as you put it cannot be enforced.

Could you explain why, please? It seems to me perfectly reasonable that I would have to agree to someone's terms and conditions to park on their land, and having agreed, I would be bound by contract law to keep up my end of the contract. Or is there some nuance of English law I'm missing which says that contracts are only valid when agreed to on public land?!

Along similar lines: if you're suggesting that there's some legal loophole which means that parking in particular cannot be regulated unless on public land, are you also suggesting that it's perfectly legal to park in a pay-and-display car park without paying?

Google is your friend.

 

[JakeS]

Google is your friend.

Google serves up a wealth of conflicting and mostly-unsourced information, and primarily seems to return sites in which people explain how to behave as weaselly as possible and make it as difficult as possible for the parking company to get money out of you until they give up. That doesn't prove it's not legal, it proves that they're a business and it doesn't make good business sense to spend £200 of office time recouping a £100 charge. (These sites also seem primarily aimed at people who have knowingly broken parking rules and want to get away with it, which makes their lack of sources seem more like "I want the law to be like this" rather than "the law is like this".)

But it also doesn't answer my question: if you can't explain why you believe it to be perfectly legal to park as long as you like wherever you like on private land - why the law makes charges for parking illegal, which is what you seem to be claiming - then I shall have to assume it's because you don't understand it yourself. Which to my eyes, renders your advice pretty useless.

I don't see the huge legal difference between a car park that has a "if you stay over X hours you owe use Y" charge and a car park that has a charge of A for the first X hours and Y after that. The only notable differences are that A is 'free' in the first instance and the method of payment collection. Or are you genuinely trying to claim that pay-and-display car park charges aren't legal either?

 

[Gary]

Look at motorway services and supermarkets. Free for x hours then a charge. What a laugh only a mug would pay. Do your research and know the law, it saves you money.

 

[newt]

Look at motorway services and supermarkets. Free for x hours then a charge. What a laugh only a mug would pay. Do your research and know the law, it saves you money.

It really hacks me off when plonkers/tight pineapples park in the local supermarket for free then shop somewhere else and I can't find a space to park to shop in the supermarket. Change the law and tow the plonkers car away.

 

[Gary]

Look at motorway services and supermarkets. Free for x hours then a charge. What a laugh only a mug would pay. Do your research and know the law, it saves you money.

It really hacks me off when plonkers/tight pineapples park in the local supermarket for free then shop somewhere else and I can't find a space to park to shop in the supermarket. Change the law and tow the plonkers car away.

I find it funny that Asda have spent money on ANPR to control their parking and they can't enforce it. They are relying on the uneducated just to pay up.