DH and I live on quite a busy road (bus route, lots of cars passing et cetera), but we are lucky enough to have plenty of free parking outside and we can almost always park right outside our house or fairly nearby. On our side of the road there are spaces marked out; on the other side of the road there are no spaces marked out, but also no yellow line, so you can park wherever.
We bought the house from a widow. When her husband was alive, he was a blue badge holder, so the space directly outside our house was marked with 'disabled' written in white on the road (space 5 on the diagram). Two houses along from ours is the same situation: there used to be a blue badge holder who lived there, but doesn't live there any more, and the space outside that house (space 7) also has 'disabled' painted on the road.
When we moved in a neighbour (Roger - really!) told us that the disabled spaces had been decommissioned so now anyone could park there. He said that because the plaques have been taken down from the wall, this meant officially the spaces were no longer in use as blue badge spaces. I assume at some point the council will get around to painting over where it says 'disabled' on the road, but they haven't done yet, and to be honest, it's quite convenient, because we generally can park in the space right outside our house as I think some people (not the neighbours, but randoms – as I say, it's quite a busy road, so people other than the residents regularly park there) do seem to think it is still a disabled space and so obviously don't park there. But all the neighbours freely park in any of the spaces.
The other day, DH and I had been out, and when we came back all the spaces were full apart from the one on the end of the road by the bus stop, which I've marked as space 1 in the diagram. (In reality the spaces don't have numbers on them and aren't assigned to any particular house.) It's a bit further up the road, so we'd never parked there before, and I noticed it was also marked as 'disabled' on the road, but also didn't have a plaque on the wall, so we assumed it was the same situation and it was no longer in use.
The next day, over 24 hours later, I was feeding the baby when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and a neighbour I hadn't met before asked me whether I knew who owned the red Ford in the space on the end. I couldn't see the car he was talking about, and had forgotten that we'd parked so far up, but ours is a Peugeot, so I replied honestly that I didn't know who owned the Ford. After he left I went upstairs and looked out the window and realised that he must've been talking about our car after all as it was the only red car in sight. I texted DH, who was coming home from work by bus and was about 15 minutes away. I told him that I thought we'd parked in a disabled space after all, and asked whether as soon as he got home he could please move the car. I was, as I said, feeding the baby, and it would've meant taking baby outside in pyjamas, putting baby in car seat for literally one minute while I moved the car, getting baby back inside again, and generally waking baby up just as baby was getting ready to go to sleep.
I heard DH come back, get the keys and move the car. When I came downstairs I asked DH what had happened. He said the neighbour had been really arsey with him and had been sitting idling in his car waiting for the space to be freed up (even though the neighbour had no way of knowing how long it might be until the owner of the car came back). DH said he'd apologised profusely to the neighbour and told him we'd been informed the space was no longer in use as a blue badge space. The neighbour said crossly, 'Well you were informed wrong, weren't you?'. And of course I do see that if you have a reserved space it must be very annoying and inconvenient not to be able to park in it.
So, two questions:
- Was I BU not to go out and move the car straight away?
- Does anyone know whether it is in fact correct that if there is no plaque on the wall then the space is no longer in use as a disabled space? As it is, there is nothing to distinguish space 1 from the disabled space outside our house, or the one further along. If these have in fact been decommissioned, then this suggests space 1 has also been decommissioned, and while I'm sure the neighbour would like to park right outside his house, in that case he needs to take his chances along with everyone else. Also, I thought any blue badge holder could use any blue badge space, in which case presumably any other disabled person could also park in space 1 whenever they liked and he could never guarantee to get it. On the other hand, if the plaque thing is wrong, this suggests we should never park in ANY of spaces 1, 5 or 7 even though everyone else definitely does park freely in 5 and 7.
I already feel guilty and awful. I just want to know whether I should feel even more guilty and awful than I actually do, or whether this amount is fine.