Hospital parking - potential incoming flak

[Brenda_R2]

Just trying to establish whether there are any particular nuances when it comes to parking on hospital land.

To be clear: no paperwork has been received yet.

Background: my niece recently attended Southmead Hospital (Bristol).  She’s a Blue Badge holder, and her partner came to collect her afterwards.  Parking there is, predictably, a disaster, but he managed to find some clearly‑marked disabled bays in the Elgar House parking area.

He parked in a disabled bay, displayed the badge, and went inside to collect her.  As it turned out, a senior doctor decided she wasn’t fit for discharge, so he returned to the car and left.

The signage warns that images are captured, so my niece is worried they’ve photographed the driver and will try to use that as leverage.

I’ve uploaded two images (and attached them here in lower resolution to overcome the fileszie restriction)

The sign facing drivers as they enter (“Blue Badge patient parking only”): https://postimg.cc/8JRDbCsy

The general terms and conditions: https://postimg.cc/LYtRVshr

Her concern is that because the Registered Keeper wasn’t a patient at Elgar House, they’ll try their luck with a speculative invoice.

I’ll upload anything that arrives, but in the meantime — initial thoughts?

[b789]

Hi @Brenda_R2. There is no obvious contravention here.

The important points are:

The bay is marked "Blue Badge patient parking only." Your niece was a Blue Badge-holding patient at the hospital. The vehicle was parked there specifically so that she could be collected. It is irrelevant that the driver or registered keeper was not personally the patient.

Government Blue Badge guidance expressly permits a badge to be displayed where someone is collecting or dropping off the badge holder and needs to park at the place of collection or drop-off. That is precisely what was happening. The fact that the proposed discharge was unexpectedly cancelled does not retrospectively convert a legitimate collection attempt into badge misuse.

The wording is not "drivers who are themselves patients only". "Patient parking" naturally describes the purpose for which the vehicle is parked. A patient does not cease to benefit from parking merely because someone else drives the vehicle to collect them.

NHS guidance also provides that disabled patients and visitors should receive free parking for the duration of their attendance or visit. Although that guidance does not itself decide whether every individual bay was used correctly, it strongly undermines any strained interpretation designed to penalise a genuine collection of a disabled patient.

There is one technical nuance: the statutory Blue Badge concessions primarily govern on-street parking; hospital land is off-street land and its use is therefore also governed by the displayed terms. But that does not assist the hospital or any parking operator here, because the displayed term appears to have been satisfied: a valid badge was displayed and the parking was for the benefit of a patient whom the driver genuinely attended to collect.

The concern about CCTV capturing the driver’s face is irrelevant. A photograph may show what the driver looks like, but it does not identify them. The parking operator has no magical database into which it can enter an image and obtain that person’s name and address. DVLA data identifies only the registered keeper and provides no photograph or other means of matching the keeper to the person shown.

Challenge anyone to take a clear photograph of a complete stranger in the street and identify them from the image alone. They cannot. CCTV is no different. At most, it shows that an unidentified person drove or left the vehicle; it does not establish that the person was the registered keeper.

There is therefore no reason to worry about the driver having been photographed and certainly no reason to identify them voluntarily. In any event, identifying the driver would not establish a breach: the vehicle was parked for the legitimate purpose of collecting the Blue Badge-holding patient.

For now, I would do nothing. If paperwork arrives, retain:

• confirmation that your niece was a patient that day;
  
• any message or call showing that her partner attended to collect her;
  
• confirmation that discharge was subsequently cancelled; and
  
• the original photographs of the entrance and contractual signs.
  

Any postal notice should then be examined before anyone contacts the issuer. In particular, the registered keeper should not casually identify the driver merely because the allegation concerns hospital parking. The precise issuer, alleged breach, wording and statutory compliance will determine the best response.

[Brenda_R2]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

My niece is worried that if a parking operator ever tried their luck in court, they might point at the Registered Keeper and say: “Look, the keeper looks exactly like the person getting out of the car in our CCTV footage — therefore they were the driver.”

[b789]

The CCTV cannot tell the operator who the driver was or enable it to identify that person before proceedings. If the registered keeper later appeared personally in court, however, the operator could invite the judge to compare the keeper with the image and draw an inference. That would be no more than an evidential argument based on resemblance, not proof automatically supplied by the CCTV.

In this case, however, the issue remains largely academic because the circumstances described do not appear to establish any parking breach in the first place.