Shortage of blue badge parking bays is causing people to battle for the same parking spots.

On average, 62 blue badge parking holders in the East of England battle for a disability parking spot, which is expected to worsen with the recent introduction on August 30 of non-visible disabilities becoming eligible for the parking scheme.

The data collected from Confused.com, an insurance and finance comparison website, also found that in 2018, more than 13,000 parking charges notices (PCN) were issued to drivers in the East of England for wrongfully parking in a blue badge parking space.

Around 74 per cent of council’s said to Confused.com that they had no plans to expand blue badge parking provisions.

Hertfordshire County Council as a whole process 19,000 blue badges a year, so over a three-year span of a badge, there are around 60,000 badges in circulation across Hertfordshire.

With the increasing demand of blue badge parking bays, and non-visible disabilities becoming eligible for the scheme, are councils doing enough to expand availability of blue badge parking bays?

Watford Borough Council

A spokesperson from Watford Borough Council said: “Over the last 12 months we have increased blue badge parking opportunities across the town.”

Within Watford Borough Council, there is more than 115 blue badge parking spots.

Church Street: 6 blue badge spots.

Wellstones: 2 blue badge spots.

Cassiobury Car Park: 12 blue badge spots.

Charter car park for Intu shopping centre has also created 25 blue badge spaces.

Other Intu car parks: 60 (these are additional to blue badge spaces provided by CitiPark in Gade car park and Church car park.)

Bottom of High street (after 11am): 10 blue badge parking spots.

St Albans District Council

The council install disabled parking bays for blue badge holders upon receiving a successful application from them.

A spokesperson for the District Council also said: “All of our car parks have disabled parking bays. If there is a particular car park that disabled users feel requires additional spaces, we would carry out a review.”

There is a total of 36 disabled parking bays on the public roads of St Albans.

With St Albans car parks, there is a total of 92 allocated disabled parking bays. The location of the general car parks can be found here:

For further information about how many disabled parking bays are in each car park in St Albans, click here.

In Harpenden public roads, there are a total of 25 disabled parking bays.

The district council were unable to give a specific amount of car park disabled parking bays in Harpenden, but below are the locations of Harpenden car parks:

For further information on Harpenden car parks, click here.

Three Rivers District Council

A spokesperson for the district council said: “Three Rivers District Council promotes new schemes as part of an annual work programme which includes everything from wide-area permit zones to individual disabled persons parking bays.”

The district council have confirmed that they have installed 136 disabled parking bays.