Blue Badge Misuse

Please provide the following information in relation to Blue Badge misuse and enforcement in your local authority area.

For the past five full calendar years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025), please provide:
1) The number of reports of suspected Blue Badge misuse received from the public or third parties

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450 or 18 hours of officer time.

To locate and retrieve this information would require a manual check of the Council’s iWays system to check every enquiry we have received, as well as every enquiry received by the blue badge team to see how many relate to blue badge misuse.

To locate and retrieve the requested information would require manual review of 31,169 enquiries received between January 2021 and the end of December 2025. To check all records at 6 records per minute would require over 86 hours of work which is in excess of the appropriate cost limit.

This response acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of your request.

Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.

2) The number of Blue Badge-related Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) issued by your authority (including offences for misuse of a Blue Badge, parking in disabled bays without a valid badge, expired badges, etc.)

The relevant contravention code is Code 40 “Parked in a designated disabled person’s parking place without displaying a valid disabled person’s badge in the prescribed manner.” The following Penalty Charge Notices have been issued for each year:

3) The number of badges seized by enforcement officers

Nil. Civil Parking Enforcement Officers are not instructed to seize badges.