Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the extension of eligibility criteria for the Blue Badge scheme on trends in the level of applications to that scheme.

The Department for Transport only has information about the numbers of applications that are submitted online using the gov.uk service. Some local authorities have their own online applications, and most local authorities also offer either a paper-based or another form of assisted application for applicants.

Prior to the launch of the new criteria, an average of around 2,000 applications for a badge were received online via gov.uk by local authorities each day. Monday’s are the busiest day, with around 2,200 submitted applications received prior to the launch of the new criteria on 30 August 2019.

On the day the new criteria launched 9,134 applications were received online, with a further 4,503 applications received on the first Monday. This has since dropped back to a Monday peak of around 2,700 applications, with 2,691 applications received on Monday 14 October.

We will continue to monitor the impact of the new criteria, and will publish figures in due course.