Hospital parking - potential incoming flak

[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.