Blue badge

Last weekend was a frustrating one. It’s time to renew my parking blue badge. We had been warned by friends renewing earlier this year that the system had changed & was now almost impossibly confusing. They were right.

Previously I had to toodle down to Morecambe library, where I was put in a special booth. There I was put in direct video link by computer with the appropriate department in Preston. There was a scanner there in which I put my benefit document to prove my entitlement. It went straight through to Preston. They took my photo with the computer camera. Easy. No problem.

Now it all has to be done on-line. The problems started with the first question. “In  which council’s jurisdiction do you live?” Easy we thought. We enter “Lancashire CC”. It’s not accepted. We try “Lancashire County Council”. Not accepted. “Lancashire”? Not accepted. In the end we put in our postcode & the computer told us “Lancashire”. Isn’t that what we’d written? And so it went on.

Finally we managed to answer all the questions. Now they wanted our 3 proofs of entitlement. First up was a photo. We couldn’t work out how to send it. We tried to phone the helpline for an explanation. The girl duly read out the regulations to us which we’d already read on-line. She had no idea, except to suggest we post it. However, we weren’t allowed to send the form without the proofs. We tried & tried. We kept being timed out. Despite it saying you can save at any time, it would not save, so each time we had to start from the beginning again.

Or to be more exact the Fox tried & tried, getting more and more worked up. Finally after many hours & a couple of sleepless nights, he finally managed to send something. By this time he’d got himself so worked up he ended up having a mini-stroke (TIA), losing all sensation down one side. I’m relieved to say it has settled down with no long term consequences.

It is relief we found an e-mail to say our application had arrived. Then later in the week we had one saying it had been approved. Now we just wait for the actual card to arrive.

I can’t help thinking this is a stupid system, when you consider that many applicants are elderly, with no computer knowledge. Yet they are expected to work all this out. It is absolutely ridiculous. Alone I would never have managed it. I can only hope that when the badge is due for renewal in another three years’ time, something clearer, more comprehensible, will have been sorted out.