[Skip to content]

Wokingham Borough Council
Search our Site
.

The Baywatch Campaign

Abuse of car-parking spaces for disabled motorists generates frustration and anger and causes real, practical problems. The Baywatch Campaign has the objective of doing something about it: we believe that there is no excuse for parking abuse. In addition, we'd like to see better parking facilities for disabled people, such as more bays, improved signage and tailored bays for particular vehicles.

The campaign has attracted widespread interest from disabled people, who regularly assist with nationwide surveys of abuse and supermarket customer feedback shows that it is a top concern amongst all customers.

Disabled bay abuse Baywatch logo
Baywatch Campaign logo

Baywatch was founded by these campaigning organisations: The British Polio Fellowship,  Mobilise, and Disability Now. It has the support of the 'big four' supermarkets, the Department for Transport, the RAC and many others.

Baywatch is also partnered by Time To Get Equal, the human rights campaign for the UK's 10 million disabled people.

 To date there have been 4 previous surveys, the first was carried out in 2002.

2007 Survey Results

Table showing baywatch campaign survey 2007 results

Supermarket

No. access. bays

No. of  cars in access. bays

No. with no blue badge

Vacant bays

% bays abused

% car parks no free bays

Poor staff response

Asda

2065

1873

482

120

23.34%

48.1%

64%

Co-Op

76 

45

 18

 12

 23.68%

 25%

 50%

Morrisons

 1632

 1325

 212

 324

 12.99%

 27.4%

 47%

Sainsbury's

1709 

 1473

 318

 314

18.61% 

38.37% 

46% 

Somerfield

60

 29

 6

 29

10% 

33% 

N/A 

Tesco

4146 

 3422

 965

 677

 23.28%

 32.29%

 63%

Waitrose

187 

 164

 12

 22

6.42% 

18.18% 

0% 

 

Summary:

  • More than 10,000 bays surveyed by

  • more than 500 people.

  • One in five accessible bays being used by non-blue badge holders - more than 2000 bays.

  • Asda & Tesco show higher levels of abuse than previous survey.

  • More than 1/3rd of supermarket car parks had no accessible bays available for disabled shoppers.

  • On average a high percentage of 'poor' or 'very poor' responses by staff to complaints of bay abuse.

  • Morrisons cut abuse from 19% to 13%

 

Supermarket responses:

  • Morrisons report that the company employs private firms to patrol their car parks on many of its sites

  • Sainsburys enforces its accessible bays and issues fines at 256 of its 455 stores

  • Asda was 'extremely shocked and disappointed' with the results, and pledged to re-brief its stores and staff, and ' take more care to police our car parks and encourage able-bodied customers to park in appropriate bays

  • Tesco have no plans at present to introduce more strict enforcement, but will fully investigate the survey findings

 

Ian Macrae, Disability Now's new editor, said: “The continuing failure of supermarkets to tackle abuse of blue badge bays is an ongoing disgrace. I'm amazed that people like the CEOs of Tesco and Asda aren`t squirming with embarrassment and thinking about whether this represents a failure on their part to meet their responsibilities, both to disabled customers and under the DDA.”

To find out more contact our Access Officer.