Dear David,
My husband is 86 and has been physically disabled since childhood.
I hope they DON'T remove council car park parking facilities as he has nowhere else to park. The house is right on the pavement with no garage.
It is bad enough that disabled hospital parking bays are usually full (and not many of them) and he is charged about £2.40 an hour to park in other bays.
Recently he was fined £50 for not showing his blue badge (in the council car park) because he had to send it off to be renewed, and the council took weeks to deal with it. He wrote to them and phoned them twice, wondering when he would receive the new permit. When I complained on his behalf they said that he could purchase a daily permit or pay hourly out of hours, which would have cost a fortune in the circumstances, which he could never afford, and certainly not for weeks on end.
I wrote to the council and their reply was that they were complying with the regulations!
When I then wrote to the Blue Badge Scheme I was told that he didn't need to send his blue badge permit to them at all! At his age he probably didn't realise that, and it transpired that his permit has not yet expired anyway. I don't suppose it would alter anything if he photo-copied his permit and sent it to them?
I asked Blue Badge why the council couldn't give out a temporary permit in cases like this? Surely that would be simple enough? In any case he was still showing his residents parking permit notice. I would also think that the parking warden would know his car anyway, as he has been parking there for over 20 years.
I wonder how many other pensioners have suffered this same treatment?
I would like to know. Is it possible that you could advertise this and see what replies come in?
Also, have you ever considered having a question and answer page for pensioners with health problems? At our age we all have them!
Thanks for listening.
P Hursey
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