Islington Council is again taking the fight to tackle parking fraud from the streets of the borough to the magistrates court in an effort to reduce the numbers of fake parking permits in circulation.<br><br>The parking fraud team were at Highbury Magistrates Court once again this week to hear Mr Ben Gentely, 60, of Harrow, a self employed jeweller working in Hatton Garden plead guilty to misusing a disabled Blue Badge that did not belong to him. <br><br>He had used the disabled badge of an 84 year old lady to park in a pay and display bay in Vine Street Bridge, Islington, EC1 on 26, 27 and 29 April 2005 so he could conveniently travel to and from his work nearby.<br><br>The magistrate impressed upon Mr Gentely the serious nature of the offence and fined him a total of £1800. The council withdrew the disabled badge and impounded his car.<br><br>Islington's parking fraud team have a 100% success rate - each of the 11 cases brought to court since August 2004 has been won with 2 more awaiting a hearing and an additional 7 being prepared.<br> <br>Cllr George Allan, executive member for customer focus said: <br><br>"People who misuse Blue Badges are cheats and deprive disabled people and ordinary motorists of parking space.<br><br>We are determined to prosecute people who do this, and our record of success speaks for itself."<br><br>There are two main ways of committing parking fraud with a Blue Badge - the parking privilege allowing disabled drivers to park in a range of locations, including on some yellow lines, across the borough. The first uses a forged or stolen permit. The second involves misuse of a genuine badge, issued to a genuine disabled person, but misused by a relative or carer when the disabled person is not in the vehicle.<br><br>Residential parking permit fraud concerns using a counterfeit permit allowing a motorist to park in a specific Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) free of charge. <br><br>To combat the problem the parking service has recently established a small team to investigate reports of fraudulent use and to look out for fake permits and badges out in the street. The team works closely with other local authorities, sharing information and targeting offenders.<br> <br>In partnership with NCP, the council has also trained its parking attendants to spot fake permits and disabled badges. It is working closely with the Metropolitan Police on joint exercises, in specific locations, targeting vehicles displaying fraudulent disabled badges. <br><br>Since February 2004, over 650 fraudulent, stolen or misused Blue Badges have been recovered from vehicles in the borough. So far eleven people have been taken to court by the fraud team and all successfully prosecuted, receiving fines ranging from £300 to £2,540. <br><br>Blue disabled badges are available to anyone who meets the strict medical criteria laid down by Blue Badges and can be used in over 20 countries across Europe. In order to combat theft of these badges, Islington Council has introduced a 'substitute' in the form of a residents’ parking permit. This allows the user to park their car in a residents’ bay in the zone in which they live. It shows their vehicle registration number making it unattractive to thieves in the same way as a blue badge which bears no registration number and can be used in any vehicle. So far the council has issued 846 of these badges. <br><br><br>Ends
Page Last Updated: 17 December 2009