GP charging for blue badge letter - disabled child

[GPlettercharge]

Just checking if this is usual practice to be charged for a GP to write a supporting letter for a blue badge application for a disabled child?

My child is 5, has profound learning difficulties and ASD. Is non verbal and attends specialist school. Displays many challenging behaviours and has no sense of danger. Regularly refuses to walk and can also try to run into the road etc.

Our local authority are notoriously difficult in giving out blue badges and I was advised by his specialist school to get a supporting letter from the GP to apply for a blue badge as they’ve seen first hand how dangerous he is in a car park.

Our GP had an appt with him and has agreed to write the letter. However they have charged £40 for this.

Is this standard? It seems excessive, it’s not as though we’ve asked for a letter to support us going on holiday or something. This is for a disabled child!

I suppose I will pay it if necessary but wanted to check if this was the norm.

Thanks

My area is known as a difficult area to get a blue badge as well. I just used ECHP, DLA letter, diagnosis report and it asks you to describe in detail what the issues are and why it would be beneficial to have one. Might be worth applying for it without the doctors letter and then if it’s refused pay for the letter and apply again.

Yes pretty standard unfortunately. Can the school not provide a supporting letter? They did for my DD’s blue badge application.

Not in my experience.

Demands for extra documentation, private letters from GPs and Consultants, additional crap which takes time and money to gather is all a good delaying tactic and will deter some people entirely (especially those who lack the support with the process).

In my borough, so long as you have all your DLA docs and medical notes it will generally go through. Its slow but the eligibilities are honoured.

In my DM’s borough the stock initial response is “not eligible” then “privately funded extra docs”, then sometimes still a rejection (all after filling in umpteen hundred pages of forms). Like Kent they know full well that a tribunal will overturn 99% of the rejections but that all takes time as well. A nice bit of stringing it out will save them a couple of years of costs on a blue badge and with luck the process becomes insurmountable for the poor sod needing transport.

Regardless as to the reason, it’s still outside of the remit for a GP, so it’s unreasonable to expect it to be done for free.

Who else is going to do it? Who's got the medical knowledge and access to the records. Who else can verify, that's right, GP.

For DLA higher mobility you do automatically get a blue badge

@C8H10N4O2 then whoever has told you that information has given you incorrect information.

The rules for being automatically entitled to a blue badge are standard across all councils in England. You can see the rules for automatic eligibility on the government’s website here.

Of course, those who don’t meet the automatic entitlement criteria are able to apply and be assessed. This is down to the individual council. And this is where other evidence comes in to play.

@ARichtGoodDram with high rate mobility DLA, you are automatically entitled to a blue badge. It is different for PIP, where, in England, enhanced PIP doesn’t always automatically entitle someone.

The OP doesn’t know whether the LA would accept what you’ve listed, because she hasn’t yet sent in the application minus the GP letter. I should imagine that the EHCP advices will contain enough information for the assessors to see why a Blue Badge is necessary. My LA accepts EHCPs and I know of several children with SEN who do have a BB.

How are you privy to the decisions made in your DMs Borough?

Absolutely standard practice- medical reports of this nature are not part of the NHS GMS contract with GP’s, so GP’s may charge you for it as the NHS does not pay them to provide that service. Which is fair enough, really, would you ask your solicitor to write you a letter for free? The fact your son is disabled does not change the fact the NHS has not contracted GP’s to provide the service (writing reports for a 3rd party) you require.

Some chose not to charge for some types of reports, some charge for all reports.

It's a civil matter, not a a medical one.

Parking and blue badges is nothing to do with the NHS which is why it's charged for.

Same would be for a criminal matter, or insurance or housing.

It's not the GPs job to use their expertise on.

If anyone wants the GPs opinion to support whatever claim they're making outside of the GPs work, they should pay.

I think it's one if those things that when we used to have "family doctors" they'd just have done- I know our GP filled forms in and would instruct the admin team that it was "no charge"; but these days so many GP practices are part of big businesses so there's no leeway.

Drs have always been private businesses. Nothing has changed.

There are specific situations where individuals automatically qualify for a Blue Badge due to their mobility challenges. Those who receive the higher rate of the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or Personal Independence Payment (PIP) due to limitations in walking or planning and following journeys are automatically eligible and need no letter form GP. HTH

@PrimoPiatti that isn’t the case for PIP. Someone eligible for enhanced mobility by scoring 12 points in the planning and following a journey activity does not automatically qualify for a blue badge in England. See the link I posted in a pp.

Oh they most certainly have been nasty. The OP asked a simple question, was given an answer and accepted it. And then in came everyone else swooping with the comments about "that is what benefits are for" like usual. And I didn't say sympathy - I said empathy. It is really hard to get your head around the maze of who does what and how disability entitlements work, and that is before you factor in struggling with a loved person who isn't coping with the world around them, a society that seems to delight in claiming that disablity is a "racket" and all the rest. Five pages in (and I won't be reading the next pages because it will just be more of the same) and there are still "it’s still work for the GP and why should it be free" comments. Many people don't know about or understand the relationship between GP's and the NHS. That doesn't make them stupid.

Don’t forget you may need to pay the council for the badge also. Ours charges 20 quid and defends that by saying it stops people falsely claiming a badge.

Laughing at the “DLA pays for it” comments. DLA doesn’t even touch the sides of what we’ve spent on disability related stuff for our daughter over the years.

I expect this is because many people are not aware of how GPs operate etc.

Like other pps have said, it’s outside of a GP’s clinical work so it is chargeable. I required a letter from my GP previously - I was charged £30. It is reasonable.

I think that is not the main reason- the costs of running a GP practice (staff, building maintenance, utilities, equipment and disposable equipment) has risen very substantially over the years, along with increasing demands due to higher population/increasing elderly population/ patients surviving with more complex needs and secondary care being stretched so passing things on to the community services. Combine all of this with under resourcing of community services (including social care) and the end result workload is massive. Yet the funding the practices receive has not increased in line with escalating costs- most GP’s earn comparatively less than they did 20 years ago, when inflation/escalating living costs are taken into account. There are a relatively small number of gp’s who have taken on management of a number of practices as a business model who earn substantially more- but they are really not the norm (despite what the papers would say).

Additionally, there are simply so many more requests for reports/forms to be filled in etc that doing them all for nothing is simply not an option- some practices do many 100’s of these every month- not charging for them would mean gp’s working for many unpaid hours per week, as well as paying the admin/secretaries time. At a time where workloads are high and finances are tight within practices, that is not an option.

Our GP practice don’t charge for letters/admin stuff for children.
Does your son receive DLA? I know every authority is different but where I am, getting the higher rate of DLA (or PIP for adults) automatically entitles you to a blue badge.

It's still people needing stuff done and the NHS not going it. Ironically the person waiting for the knee could continue working once it's fixed and paying back into the system whereas the child has a much longer time before working.

Sticking no boots in. There's obviously not enough money to do everything so it's got to be prioritised. Surely the fact that someone can have an op then be back to a contributing member of society within months should take priority

I know very well what the rules say.

I’m describing what has actually happened where I have been involved in the application processes in two different areas.

Have you seriously never come across cases where LAs pull ever trick in the book to delay expenditure in sectors such as disability, SEN, care etc? They know what the rules are and don’t care that tribunals will overturn decisions as not legally valid. They also know that every few months or years of delay saves £££.

@C8H10N4O2 Your posts didn’t make it clear you knew what the actual rules were. If you knew that it is strange you posted “each with their own set of rules” when that absolutely isn’t the case.

I do this day in, day out; of course I have come across LAs acting unlawfully . That doesn’t change the rules, that doesn’t mean each area has ‘their own set of rules’ or that people can’t challenge unlawful decisions. It doesn’t have to take ‘years’ to challenge a blue badge refusal when the person is automatically entitled to a blue badge and has unlawfully been refused.

By that logic, some people with disabilities should not get any help at all as no NHS treatment will cure them.