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The British Polio Fellowship Registered Charity No: 1108335 |
Baywatch
News
The
campaign to tackle abuse of supermarket car parking spaces.
Background
Baywatch
partners
The supermarkets
Involving members
Future action
News
New,
dedicated Baywatch website
January
survey
'Emergencies
only' call to police
Blue
Badge review - Govt. support for Baywatch
RAC funding for awards scheme
RAC/Baywatch Xmas press release
Early Day Motion
Baywatch at TUC conference
Background
In
2001 Bert Massie, CBE, Chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, addressed
the British Polio Fellowship's Annual General Meeting. At the time members
expressed frustration at the widespread abuse of supermarket parking facilities
and Baywatch was born. In fact, Baywatch was not the first initiative
to address the problem: the earlier 'Disabled Link Up' scheme had been
succesful in bringing the supermarkets together and at the time of the
Baywatch launch current partners, the Disabled Drivers' Motor Club, were
pursuing their '"Give us Back our Parking Spaces Campaign".
Baywatch partners
Now, as well as the BPF, Baywatch includes Mobilise and Disability Now with whom significant advances have been made - as well as the major supermarkets (see below).
Supermarket
involvement
Meetings
with representatives from Asda,
Tesco, Sainsbury's
and Safeway (the
big four) have secured board-level commitment to tackling abuse. Each
company is now looking at things such as signage and parking bay colouring
to try to improve facilities. Sadly, changes will take time
and
we still hear some local horror stories but we aim to keep the pressure
on and to work at finding solutions with the stores.
Involving
members
Members
of all four participating oganisations have helped the campaign through
surveys of provision throughout the UK. In 2002 'undercover agents' undertook
a spot check of nearly three hundred stores. They discovered eight hundred
and ninety eight instances of cars using bays designated for disabled
motorists but which were not displaying a blue or orange parking badge.
This represents nearly a quarter of all the bays surveyed. This demonstrates
that the supermarkets have a long way to go - although perhaps not so
far as the visitors to the 37% of stores that had no free spaces during
peak times. For them a solution cannot come soon enough. Another survey
is planned for January 2003.
Future
action
An
aid to further action will be the financial support for Baywatch from
the Government announced on 18th December by Transport Minister David
Jamieson. In a statement he reaffirmed the government's support for the
Baywatch campaign and announced he was committing £15k "to part-fund a
pilot project with supermarket companies to test different approaches
to raising awareness and deterring abuse."
With
this funding we intend to run a feasibility study in partnership with
supermarkets, which will include local pilot projects in designated areas.
We hope that this will provide a platform for participants to unroll their
models of best practice in tackling abuse and in raising awareness of
the issue amongst customers and staff. With such models, tried, tested
and laid before them on a plate, we hope that ministers will be keen to
follow things through. (Another survey was conducted in January
2003).
Early Day Motion 211
MP, Laura Moffatt, tabled an Early Day Motion in support of Baywatch, which is reproduced below. If your MP hasn't signed up you may care to send them a fax, which you can do from here.
That this House commends the Baywatch Campaign set up by
the British Polio Fellowship, the Disabled Drivers' Association, the Disabled
Drivers Motor Club and the Newspaper Disability Now to encourage more
protection of disabled parking bays in supermarket car parks from abuse
by able bodied drivers; condemns the selfishness of able-bodied drivers
in occupying disabled parking spaces; welcomes the initiative taken by
ASDA, Safeway, Sainsbury's and Tesco to tackle this problem more effectively
than in the past; and wishes the campaign every success in its efforts
to eradicate a problem which causes unnecessary annoyance and inconvenience
to disabled people.
RAC funding
The BPF, DDA, DDMC (now Mobilise) and DN got together again in September and October 2002 to discuss future Baywatch plans, including our submission to government of ideas for a feasibility study and further exploration of an idea for a 'Baywatch Standard', which could be 'earned' by parking providers who satisfy certain criteria.
As
well as the Baywatch Standard another string to our bow lies in the RAC's
kind agreement to provide sponsorship of £5,000 for the Annual Baywatch
Awards. This will provide excellent publicity for the campaign and for its
members but, most importantly, it will help to raise awareness of the problem.
View the RAC/Baywatch Christmas 2002 press release here
With your help we have already undertaken two major nationwide surveys and in 2003 we're keeping up the pressure.
The results of our January 2003 survey can be found at our new dedicated Baywatch website: www.baywatchcampaign.org (currently under construction).
The Trades Union Disability Conference held on 26th and 27th November at Congress House in London heard all about the campaign from BPF and Amicus Union member, Steve Melia. The conference of 190 delegates representing 31 unions, with 105 observers and visitors present, heard from Steve about the involvement of the BPF, DDA, DDMC and Disability Now in efforts to tackle parking abuse.
A
motion calling upon the Government to give urgent consideration to a legislative
review of current regulations attracted unanimous support, raising hopes
that the TUC will be lobbying in support of the campaign's objectives.
Maria Eagle MP, Minister for Disabled People and TUC Deputy General Secretary
was present and spoke of plans to improve travel for disabled people.
top
You
can't park here Officer!
The
Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO),
has urged police chiefs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to remind
their officers to use parking bays designated for disabled motorists in
emergencies only. The advice came after Baywatch partner, Disability
Now, told ACPO
of cases in which parking spaces had been misused by police officers.
New dedicated Baywatch website
Campaign
partners are currently in the process of creating a single, dedicated
Baywatch campaign website: www.baywatchcampaign.org.
The site is under construction (March 2003) and when fully operational will provide a one-stop source of all the latest news on the campaign.