WELL done Bolton Council on its Blue Badge policy. Bury Council is in the process of adopting the policy which I have read and which is an effective piece of work. There are some minor issues to be put right, such as easy disabled access to ticket machines, and the fact that it often takes a genuinely disabled person more time to complete their shopping etc, than an able bodied person.

Greater Manchester police were persuaded to carry out a blitz on Blue Badge abuse in Manchester city centre a year ago.

Unsurprisingly the biggest abusers of Blue Badges were people with top-of-the-range cars, many in “professional”

jobs. The police charged the individuals with defrauding the council (of car parking income), misuse of a badge, and they were clamped in the process. Some ended up paying over £1,500 for their abuse. The abuse stopped immediately.

Bury police carried out a similar and successful operation last year. The importance of the Blue Badge to genuinely disabled people is that on car parks it gives them safe space in which to get out from, and into, their vehicle. I have rarely had a discussion about Blue Badges with anyone, without being told that they had witnessed people who evidently were not disabled “leaping out” of their vehicle.

The Blue Badge is issued to the person with a disability, but they may be being driven by family members, who may well “leap”

out of the vehicle, or the driver may be a Blue Badge cheat.

Unfortunately, the crackdown on Blue Badge cheats coincides with a police initiative for something called “restorative justice”, where regardless of how much money the cheat has stolen from the local council, or how many genuine disabled people have lost a safe parking space, the cheat will be given a “talking to” by a disabled person, and let go.

Whilst we wish restorative justice success, most genuine disabled people know that the only effective sanction is to make it very unprofitable for the cheat.

Clamping the vehicle, charging with fraud, assuming that the cheat has not been paying for parking for a year, at £4 a day, and putting their faces in The Bolton News will be more effective.

So well done Bolton Council, and it is good to see every council not reinventing the wheel, but learning from each other; it saves time and money. Let’s have more of it. Bolton should learn from Bury about creating awardwinning parks and open spaces etc.

Ron Shambley Clough Avenue Westhoughton