Guidance

DPTAC position on extending the Blue Badge eligibility

Published 3 August 2018

The first parking scheme for disabled people (the Orange Badge Scheme) was created in 1971 to promote greater independent mobility and social inclusion. The Blue Badge Scheme as we know it today was introduced on 1 April 2000. The aim of the scheme is to help disabled people with severe mobility problems to access goods and services, by allowing them to park close to their destination.

Eligibility for a Blue Badge is not based on the type of disability. People with physical, mental or cognitive conditions can receive a badge if they meet the qualifying criteria. However, it has become clear that the application of the scheme to people with non-physical disabilities is not clearly understood or administered consistently across the country. The Department for Transport has therefore decided to look again at the eligibility with a view to clarifying the regulations and guidance.

DPTAC supports the government’s proposals to extend the Blue Badge criteria to include “people with non-visible disabilities who have very considerable difficulty when walking, or a risk of very considerable harm to their health and safety” but we believe that a revision of the eligibility criteria ought to be considered in the context of an evaluation of demand for Blue Badge spaces. This is because any broadening of the criteria will place added pressure on an already resource. Therefore, we believe that a review of the Blue Badge scheme is required that looks at more than just the eligibility criteria.

Here we explain our reasoning to the Department for Transport on expanding the criteria to better meet those with non-visible disabilities.

1. Eligibility

We did not agree that there should be automatic badge eligibility for people with non-physical disabilities who score 12 points under the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) activity ‘Planning and Following Journeys’. Nor did we agree with the proposed new ‘with further assessment’ criterion for those who cannot ‘follow the route of any journey without another person, assistance animal or orientation aid’. This has been taken from the PIP criteria, ‘Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid’, but the purpose of a PIP award, which is what this criterion has been written for, is totally different to a Blue Badge award.

The relevant 12 point PIP criterion is not about needing to park a car within, say, 50 metres of where you are going. The familiar journey used as part of the PIP assessment process could in fact involve walking a mile or travelling by bus/train with another person to a nearby town. The PIP journey is not about the physical distance of a journey but the fact that assistance of some kind is needed to make it. We believe this criterion is much too wide and would open up the Blue Badge scheme for many people who do not need to park close to where they are going.

For example, those who have an intellectual impairment, such as that associated with Down’s Syndrome, which may result in them needing another person with them on every journey, do not necessarily need the benefit of a Blue Badge. Needing to be accompanied by another person in order for them to follow the route of a journey does not equate to needing a Blue Badge to park nearby. We therefore welcome the government’s decision to remove the proposed automatic and non-automatic eligibility criteria for people who cannot ‘follow the route of any journey without another person, assistance animal or orientation aid’.

There will of course be people who satisfy this 12 point PIP criteria that should get a Blue Badge, eg those who are severely visually impaired, people who have severe autism and dementia and there should be another way in which these people could qualify but we do not think this is the correct criteria to enable this to happen as it would open up the scheme to too many people.

People with a visual impairment can already qualify automatically for a Blue Badge if they are registered blind so they are covered by existing Blue Badge criteria.

It is unfortunate that Scottish and Welsh governments have already made the link so any PIP recipient getting 12 points from the PIP criteria “Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid’ will qualify automatically for a Blue Badge. We say unfortunately because we do not agree that this should be the case and it therefore potentially makes qualifying criteria different across the UK which is undesirable.

As an alternative to the PIP criteria ‘follow the route of any journey without another person, assistance animal or orientation aid’ descriptor we suggested consideration of the PIP criterion ‘Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant’. This would support, for example, people with severe agoraphobia, who may be able to make more journeys if they are able to park close by to their destination, and most importantly “escape” back to their car quickly if they need to. Utilising this criterion would mean that at least some people with non-physical disabilities would be able to use their PIP award to prove eligibility for a Blue Badge, but unfortunately not all. We therefore welcome the government’s decision to introduce this alternative eligibility route.

We would like to stress that DPTAC is in support of extending the scheme to people with non-physical disabilities, it is the use of the 12 point PIP criteria that is of great concern to us.

We would also like to state that we fully agree with the link between PIP / DLA and Blue Badge criteria for those with physical conditions (at least 8 points in the Moving Around section of PIP) and we do not propose that this should be changed.

2. Assessment

We do not think it is fair, or sufficient, to use assessors that are not ‘independent’ to the Blue Badge applicant. The whole reason for introducing the independent mobility assessor to the Blue Badge scheme in 2011 was that they would be just that, ‘independent’.

Many applicants will have a close relationship with their GP and/or other medical professionals and so they cannot be considered independent. Additionally, in the same way that there is a risk to the GP/patient relationship being damaged if the GP doesn’t support a patient’s Blue Badge request, the same will be true of, for example, a psychiatrist/patient relationship, and probably in the latter case with even more damaging results.

An applicant’s own medical professionals will not have had sufficient training in terms of Blue Badge criteria, and most don’t have the time to study and research them carefully enough to make a decision that would be comparable to that made by other professionals, either within their locality or nationally. By the very nature of their profession they are in a ‘caring’ relationship with their patients, which makes objectivity about applying criteria for a Blue Badge an intrinsically harder task for them as opposed to an independent assessor. They may also feel under pressure from their patients to back a claim.

Many medical professionals might write a letter to support a Blue Badge claim which says, for example, ‘xx tells me that he cannot walk 50m’. Whilst understandable as this type of letter and statement helps preserve relationships with the patient, and gets around the fact they may not actually know whether their patient can walk that far or not, giving a Blue Badge based on this type of letter would not be appropriate. There is a danger of this happening.

Many medical professionals will charge for the service of assessing and providing documentary evidence for a Blue Badge, which many individuals wouldn’t be able to afford. This raises the question of equality of access to a Blue Badge.

Our preference would be for a local authority to have independent trained assessors, registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), able to complete Blue Badge assessments. This would keep the assessment process completely independent.

There is a perception that PIP assessors generally understand physical health conditions much better than non-physical conditions such as mental health, autism, dementia or cognitive difficulties. We don’t think either type of condition is necessarily more difficult than the other to assess. However, many health care professionals lack the necessary understanding of mental health conditions, autism, dementia and cognitive difficulties.

People applying for PIP often have both physical and non-physical health problems. The same will be the case for Blue Badge applicants. However, there is an important difference in that people applying for PIP may pick up some points from the Planning and Following Journeys part of PIP, and some points from the mobility section which added together would give them a PIP mobility award. This means that they should be assessed by a health care professional that understands both physical and non-physical health, which does not always happen.
However, for Blue Badge purposes we envisage that people will be making a claim based mainly on either non-physical health reasons or physical health reasons, and not generally both. Applicants will need to satisfy one of the Blue Badge criteria completely to get a Blue Badge and won’t gain benefit from half satisfying one and half satisfying another criterion, which in effect they can do in PIP. We think therefore there needs to be some Blue Badge assessors skilled in physical health, and other Blue Badge assessors skilled in non-physical health, including mental health, autism, dementia and cognitive difficulties, and the applicant be given the option to choose which path they wish to follow. This would answer the difficulty of the assessor having the right type of experience for the assessment.

If a person felt that their non-physical health needs and physical health needs were equally strong in terms of the Blue Badge criteria, they could opt for one type of assessor, and if that wasn’t fruitful for them, and that assessor didn’t feel confident to assess across all the Blue Badge criteria, they could ask for an assessment with a differently specialised assessor. We don’t believe this would happen very often.

Although we would not like to see an applicant’s own medical professional making the Blue Badge decision, we believe that evidence from these professionals would be very beneficial to the person carrying out the assessment. Having backup medical evidence is hugely useful, so the applicant could be asked to give in any psychiatrist or specialist letters they wanted which the assessor could consider. People with mental health difficulties often have copies of their letters from psychiatrists and people with autism often have their autism diagnosis etc. There can be a problem with the age of documents, but if it is only used as supporting evidence for an assessment undertaken by a trained Blue Badge assessor then they may still be helpful.

We strongly advise having a robust appeals process for unsuccessful Blue Badge applicants. Figures from PIP appeals show that assessments done by one health professional aren’t always right and this is likely to be true of Blue Badge assessors. However, we believe that it is more likely a Blue Badge assessor would get the decision right, rather than a PIP assessor, as they would have a much smaller number of criteria to assess against and would hopefully either be a physical disability or non-physical health disability specialist, matched with the correct type of disability of the applicant.

We believe lessons should be learnt from the current system with PIP assessors and assessments when devising a new Blue Badge assessment system.

3. Further Considerations

Although we strongly agree with extending the scheme to those with non-physical disabilities we believe this is likely to cause further difficulties within the Blue Badge scheme until the scheme is brought under control both in terms of abuse and incorrect allocation of badges. There are currently large discrepancies in how Blue Badge use is enforced, and who is eligible for one, and between one local authority compared to another. This should not be allowed to continue. Until these fundamental problems are resolved any changes in eligibility to deliver the desired outcome of improved access for those who are currently excluded will be challenging to achieve.

It has been suggested that one way to ensure the criteria are rigorously and properly adhered to is for the decision process on the issue of Blue Badges to be removed from local authorities and transferred to a separate national body. Nobody would suggest local authorities issue driving licences and this is a similar issue. In the same way that a driver with a driving licence will drive throughout England, those with a Blue Badge will use them throughout England, not just in their locality. Having a separate national body administering and enforcing Blue Badges would ensure consistent decisions on eligibility, and enforcement. If cost is a prohibitive factor then the cost of running this body could be partly covered by a means-tested charge to applicants for badges, a charge on renewal applications, a charge for replacement badges and a share of revenue from fines. The recent statistics on prosecutions for Blue Badge abuse show that most local authorities do very little to tackle the problem or even have a policy on the matter. In some cities it is estimated that half the badges are being used by the person who is not the holder.

When extending the scheme to include more people how their parking is going to be accommodated must be considered and local authorities will need to look at their current Blue Badge parking provision both on and off-street and how they can expand it. This will also affect operators of private car parks who may need to adjust the number of disabled spaces they provide to meet a growing need.

It is already very difficult for existing Blue Badge holders to find a disabled bay off-street due to demand and high levels of abuse of the scheme. With an increase of Blue Badge holders coupled with no increase in the provision of designated Blue Badge parking bays in key locations, a lack of effective enforcement of existing Blue Badge bays, and only limited amounts of permitted parking on yellow lines there will be even greater pressure on the available parking spaces. This will lead to frustration, traffic congestion and increased pollution, the latter two due to vehicles searching for spaces and also parking in less suitable places.

Although we strongly agree with the scheme being extended to support those with severe mental health difficulties, autism, dementia etc it will inevitably increase pressure on disabled parking spaces, thereby having an impact on current users. Consideration needs to be given at the same time as expanding the eligibility criteria to improving enforcement procedures by local authorities and to increasing the availability of Blue Badge spaces. If the scheme is being opened up to those without a physical disability it may be timely to review the size of disabled parking bays. Currently to meet BS 8300 bays must have hatched markings around the bay to allow for the extra space needed to get into a wheelchair or to exit the vehicle. If a large number of Blue Badge holders are not going to need this extra space, then it may be appropriate to review the number of bays in car parks that need to meet the standard. Perhaps to meet the extra demand some Blue Badge spaces could be near the exit but without the extra physical space around the bay. This would mean that Blue Badges would need to highlight whether that person’s disability means they need the use of a wider bay or not. We appreciate the Blue Badge scheme is an on-street scheme so bay size is of less importance but when considering how to meet the extra demand for space, parking within car parks is going to be essential. In addition, maybe it is also time to consider the use of a different symbol for Blue Badge spaces being phased in. A more inclusive disabled signature/icon. Otherwise we will have an on-going situation where the public make judgements about anyone using these spaces who is not obviously physically disabled.

If people with non-physical disabilities are better able to qualify for a Blue Badge there will need to be very clear guidance and public education/infotainment on this, to avoid resentment, and to avoid the sort of incidents where notes are left on windscreens calling into question people’s disability. Appropriate signage could help educate the general public that the needs of the Blue badge holder may not always be obvious and so they should not make assumptions about their disability.

Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee – June 2018