Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what guidance his Department has provided to (a) local authorities, (b the police and (c) hospitals on the enforcement of rules relating to parking spaces for the disabled.

Currently, both local authorities and private parking operators providing parking facilities are required under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people and to provide them equal opportunities to access services.

In respect of local authority parking, the Secretary of State’s ‘Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities in England on Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions’ sets out the parking enforcement framework for the 98 percent of English local authorities that have acquired civil parking enforcement powers. The police have no powers to enforce parking contraventions within these local authority areas, except at safety-critical pedestrian crossings, and the Department does not issue advice to the police.

Local authorities have powers to safeguard parking places for disabled people and the Department has published ‘Blue Badge scheme local authority guidance (England)’.

Although off-street private car parks are required to make reasonable adjustments under the above-mentioned equalities legislation, the form those adjustments take are up to individual operators, who can best judge what is appropriate within their car parks.  Often private car park operators provide Blue Badge spaces in their car parks but there is no legal basis for this and, as such, they are essentially advisory.

In respect of hospitals, the Department for Health and Social Care guidance ‘NHS car-parking management: environment and sustainability, 2015’ notes the importance of providers enforcing Blue Badge bays and dedicated Blue Badge car parks to ensure their use is not abused by non-Blue Badge holders. Enforcement is a matter for the relevant NHS Trust.