Driver caught with dead granny’s blue badge was ‘using it in her honour’
A YOUNG motorist caught with her dead grandmother’s disabled parking badge told investigators she was ‘using it in her honour’.
Emily Davis, 21, was challenged while using the blue badge to park her Mini One for free – and claimed her grandmother Elizabeth was shopping nearby.
But in truth she had died in September 2014, nearly a year before Davis was caught, magistrates heard.
Jenny Ager, prosecuting, said that on August 12 last year Davis told council officials she was only dropping off her grandmother in Portsmouth after driving down from London. She repeated this three times, the court heard.
But Davis later admitted: ‘ Yes I’m lying, I should know better – I used to work in a custody suite.’
She told investigators: ‘I was using [the badge] in her honour. If [parking at] Gunwharf [shopping centre] wasn’t so expensive I wouldn’t have done it.’
Portsmouth magistrates also heard Davis admitted having enough cash for the pay-and-display street parking space she had used.
In an interview with council officials on September 18, Davis acknowledged she had no entitlement to disabled parking. The badge, issued by West Sussex County Council, was invalid as it had been cancelled after her grandmother’s death.
Davis, who wept in the dock, said: ‘I’ve never done anything illegal in my car, no parking things that have gone against me. I’ve never parked in inappropriate places.
‘I’ve never used the badge before, it was the first time I’ve had it.
‘I’ve learned a huge lesson between now and August, I’ve regretted every moment of it. I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.’
As well as a £750 fine Davis, of Arundel, West Sussex, was ordered to pay £360.20 costs and a £75 victim surcharge. She admitted unlawfully using a disabled parking badge.
Portsmouth councillor Ken Ellcome, cabinet member for traffic and transportation, said: ‘Portsmouth City Council’s parking team are more and more determined to protect the integ- rity of the blue badge scheme – the courts are right behind us.’
In 2013 it was revealed councils were spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money hiring private detectives to catch blue badge fraudsters. Dozens of town halls, several quangos and even one central government department used the investigators to snoop on both their own staff and members of the public.
In February 2014, shopkeeper James Butcher was fined £1,000 after he was caught fraudulently using his wife’s disabled parking badge.
He claimed he had used it legitimately to drop off his wife before going to work – but it emerged she had been at their home in Croydon all day.