Car park attendant taking down registration numbers?

[my-spirit-soars-free]

Our local hospital car park has decided to charge blue badge holders out of blue badge spaces.

 

Basically, you take a ticket at the barrier, then park the car, go and have your appointment, then if you are a blue badge holder you take the blue badge out of your car, go and find the parking people (whose office is not wheelchair accessible, and the bell does not work) and if you are in a blue badge space you get an exit ticket, free of charge. Oh, and a sore throat, trying to shout loud enough to be heard over the radio. Alternatively, you pay the machine, if you prefer.

 

To help them enforce the blue badge free only in a blue badge space, they are sending their parking attendants out to collect the registration number, car manufacturer, model, and colour of every car in a blue badge space - and the time, as well, I am told, as it is only three hours free in the blue badge space.

 

If I go for the free parking concession then my exit time is noted, and I think they take my name off the blue badge as well (they just take my badge into the inaccessible office, and asking did not elicit which details they were taking off it) - but even if I don't go for the free parking, the fact my car is in a blue badge space has been noted.

 

Nowhere in the car park does it say that they are doing this, surely there should be some warning that they are collecting this info for the blue badge spaces?

 

Other car parks do collect the info, if I want free parking I have to give them my registration number, and my blue badge - but I have the choice, I can pay, and keep my privacy, and they ask me to hand over my personal data, or smile sweetly at a cctv camera. Here I cannot avoid the invasion of my privacy, the information is collected if I go into a disabled space - and I need the wider space to get out of the car.

 

Are they entitled to collect this info without warning us? And am I entitled to ask how the information is being used, safeguarded, etc?

 

I should mention it is a private car park management company running the car park for the hospital.

[buzby]

Well, it is their land/car park - so if they choose to record your number and details they can do so, or have CCTV doing the same thing. There's probably a sign somewhere so they comply with the SPA. That said, you can vode with your feet and not use their facility. Just like someone taking a picture of your house from the street, it is perfectly legal.

 

It sounds like a half-assed plan that is not really doing anything useful, but heck, they don't have the monopoly in this.