Blue Badge Scheme
The Blue Badge Scheme provides a national arrangement of parking concessions for people with severe walking difficulties who travel either as drivers or passengers. 
The Scheme also applies to registered blind people, and people with very severe upper limb disabilities who regularly drive a vehicle but cannot turn a steering wheel by hand.
The scheme is designed to help severely disabled people to travel independently, as either a driver or a passenger, by allowing them to park close to their destination.
Parking Concessions for Disabled People, published on the Executive's website in April 2007.
Information on Using the Blue Badge in Europe
If you are a visitor from outside the EU, please contact the local authority in the area in which you wish to visit, to establish whether there are arrangements in place for using your disabled person's badge.
You can get a badge if you -
- you receive the higher rate of the mobility component of the Disability Living Allowance
- you receive a War Pensioners' Mobility Supplement
- you use a motor vehicle supplied for people with disabilities by the Scottish Executive or the Department of Social Security
- you have a severe disability in both upper limbs, regularly drive a motor vehicle but cannot turn the steering wheel of a motor vehicle by hand
- you have a permanent and substantial disability which means you are unable to walk or have very considerable difficulty in walking. In this case, you may be asked some questions to help your Local Authority decide if you are entitled to a badge
- you are registered blind
- you are unable to walk or have considerable difficulty in walking because of a temporary but substantial disability which is likely to last for a period of at least 12 months but less than 3 years
- children under 2 whose medical needs require that he or she is accompanied by bulky medical equipment which includes in particular any of the following:
i) ventilators;
ii) suction machines;
iii) feed pumps;
iv) parenteral equipment;
v) syringe drivers;
vi) oxygen administration equipment; and
vii) continual oxygen saturation equipment.
People with a psychological disorder will not normally qualify unless their impairment causes very considerable, and not intermittent, difficulty in walking.
Blue Badge Design
A revised design for the individual and organisational blue badges can be viewed. The redesign was done in September 2006 and comes into effect in 2007.
" The Power to Inspect Blue Badges came into force on 1 January 2004. This allows police officers, traffic wardens and those specifically employed by local authorities to check that vehicles are parked properly in council car parks, namely local authority parking attendants to inspect Blue Badges. It makes it an offence to fail to produce a badge when requested to do so by any of these authorised persons. The Power to Inspect badges can be used when an authorised officer suspects that an offence is being committed."