Blue Badge reform Survey

7. Fees

7.1 The process of applying fees to the applicant was not set out clearly or consistently by Local Authorities. In some areas it appears to be an up-front charge, in others a back end charge. It is not clear from Local Authorities’ responses how they identify and refund refused applications. Additionally, from their survey responses, some authorities appear to be charging for mobility assessment, as opposed to administration costs.

7.2 The more complicated process for charging fees by GPs to Health Boards was also explored. Most Health Boards pay a fee to GPs for these services, and that fee is typically £25. One Health Board reports that each GP surgery sets its own fee for mobility assessments and so could not cost it overall. Worryingly, in this Health Board area the Local Authorities and the Health Board think that the other is paying GPs for the assessments. Four Health Boards report that they do not pay any fees for this service. For one it may be that the GPs carry the cost of the mobility assessment, for two it is being paid by the Local Authority, and for the last as they do not normally have mobility assessments, there is no cost or fees associated.

7.3 The total identified spend on Blue Badges was around £764,230 in 2010/11 (from the two surveys). The Health Boards spent £720,295, and Local Authorities spent £43,435 in direct payments. However the total spend is likely to be higher than the figures reported here, due to missing data. In addition the spend identified on the survey only covers assessments and does not include administration costs, or the cost of Badge production so the total cost of the Blue Badge process is unknown. Assessments are only required for discretionary Badges, and the average spend on assessments is £14.66 per Badge.

7.4 For those Health Boards which pay a fee for mobility assessments the money comes from a range of different NHS budgets. Two Health Boards report that it comes from the Primary Care budget, two from the Public Health Budgets, one from the Community Care team, and one suggests several budgets, including Primary Care and Public Health. Interestingly one Health Board states that there is no budget held for mobility assessments, but later reports that it spent circa £70,000 on these assessments.

7.5 There may be issues with robustness of the data surrounding the costs of these mobility assessments. The fees paid by Health Boards vary apparently without pattern by size of board, or number of assessments made. The spend in one Health Board area (far from the largest by number of applications) was £134,000, whereas another covering a much larger population spent only £29,000. For those areas where Local Authorities pay for assessments in place of the Health Board the Local Authority spend has been used. This was then used to ascertain a notional spend per discretionary Badge for each Health Board area:^[10]

7.6 The spend per assessment varies widely from nothing to over £33 per assessment. It is hard to be sure if the picture of identifiable spend is up or down as there is too much missing data.