AN EIGHT-WEEK wait for blue badges and a call for traffic wardens to be more considerate when badges have expired was raised at a council meeting by an Ellesmere Port councillor.
Ellesmere Port Town ward councillor Lynn Clare (Lab) told a meeting of Cheshire West and Chester Council: “Why are disabled people having to wait for up to two months to have their blue badges replaced? Surely such a simple administrative process shouldn’t take this long.”
“This is a very important point,” said Cllr Mike Jones (Con), who was answering questions for portfolio holder Cllr Lynn Riley (Con).
“Changes to the processing of blue badges came into effect on January 1, 2012, and have impacted on the processing times due to the badge now being produced by an external company and the form being longer and more detailed than previously. As our systems are not integrated this has led to double keying.
“From the date the council sends an instruction for the badge to be completed the company has five to six days to send it out, whereas the council could previously send out the badge within a day or so.
“The change has been introduced to provide a more hi-tech badge leading to increased security and reduced fraud.
“In April this year there were delays and the turnaround time in some cases has been eight weeks, which was a result of volumes and double keying. The eight-week turnaround lasted no longer than a month, after which we started to reduce the process times.”
Applications received on July 7 were being dealt with and the process appeared to be back in line with the agreement which provided for three and four week handling times.
Cllr Clare said: “It is my understanding that traffic wardens are allowing only up to 14 days after the date of expiry on a blue badge but no longer before there are fixed penalties.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could instruct the traffic wardens to be a little more considerate to blue badge holders?”
Cllr Jones said he would ask Cllr Riley to take that up with the director.
