Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendations.

The Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment advised Members of the new working arrangements for issuing Blue Badges and sought agreement for the enforcement of the scheme within Flintshire through the Civil Parking Enforcement Officers.

A toolkit had been issued by Welsh Government (WG) to help local authorities manage the application and verification process to achieve a consistent approach across Wales. 

Civil Parking Enforcement across Flintshire had seen a significant improvement in reducing illegal parking with the introduction highlighting the lack of enforcement around the use of blue badges by Civil Parking Enforcement Officers.  Officers regularly witnessed the miss-use of badges and were keen to include enforcement of blue badges alongside civil parking enforcement.

For the Blue Badge process, there were two sets of criteria that were applied:

·         Automatic qualification – the applicant required no further assessment and qualified automatically generally owing to the level of disability benefits they were in receipt of from the Department of Works and Pensions.  In these cases the process was straight forward and a blue bade was issued upon receipt of the qualifying evidence.  A copy of the criteria for automatic qualification was attached as Appendix A to the report

·         Assessment – an application was submitted and measured against the recently issued WG Toolkit.  There was no longer a need for the Council to contact GP’s for supporting medical evidence.  It was recognised that the applicant’s GP was not best placed to supply objective evidence due to their role as an advocate on behalf of their patient and there was also a cost of between £20 and £30 charged by the GP for this service.  The customer was now able to use evidence that they would already have in support of their application, for example prescriptions for medication relating to their illness, Occupational Therapist Assessments etc. 

WG did not allow local authorities to charge for issuing Blue Badges however there was a provision to charge a fee of up to £10 for a replacement where badges had been lost, stolen or damaged.

RESOLVED:

(a)       That the content of the report and the new arrangements for assessing / issuing Blue Badges be noted;

(b)       That the introduction of a fee of £10 for issuing replacement badges be approved; and

(c)        That the enforcement of Blue Badge parking within the remit of the Civil Parking Enforcement service be fully adopted.