Parking department council worker sacked after 4 days for illegal parking

Madeleine Start, 32, was found to have used her child’s disabled parking badge on each of the four days she briefly worked at Portsmouth City Council’s Parking Service department at the civic offices.

Start, of Tennyson Road, Fratton, was caught using the Blue Badge illegally around 9am on February 22 having started her new job on February 19.

Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court heard how the defendant parked her Vauxhall in a marked pay and display space in Charles Dickens Street. Checks on the badge from an enforcement officer revealed it belonged to a child - raising suspicions it was being misused.

Contact details on the badge showed the child’s parent was Start which “matched the name of a new employee within the parking department”, a statement from the city council’s enforcement team said.

At 10.23am, the investigating officer entered the parking department and frogmarched Start into a private room where she was quizzed under caution. She gave different versions of her account to the officer, including how her nan had met them at the car before the boy was taken shopping.

After being told CCTV would be checked, Start changed her tale and said she had “dropped him round the corner” near a Tesco store.

Under further questioning Start finally came clean. “The defendant then provided another account, retracting her previous two concocted stories and admitted that in fact her son was in Hilsea, and she had parked alone,” the officer’s statement said.

“She went on to say that she was aware of the rules of use, and that she had no right to use the badge without her son. She was aware that she had parked in a Pay and Display parking bay, and claims that she only displayed the badge as she didn’t have any money on her to pay for parking that day.”

Start was then asked whether she had misused her son's badge on any other occasion, and told the officer: “I did it all week.” CCTV footage showed Start parking illegally in the same space each day during her whirlwind stint before she suffered the ignominy of being sacked from her job after only four days.

When asked to explain her reasons for misusing the badge, Start said it was to save paying £13 to park every day. Council workers have the option of parking in a nearby multi-storey for a reduced fee but Start had declined this.

Start was convicted of four charges of misusing her son’s disabled badge in order to obtain free parking. She failed to show up at court, leaving magistrates “unimpressed” especially when told she had been a council employee at the time of her blatant Blue Badge misuse.

Start was handed a total fine of £710. Cabinet member for transport, councillor Peter Candlish said: "This fine shows that we will not tolerate abuse of the Blue Badge scheme, no matter who the employer is. To misuse a badge in this manner to gain free parking at work should be classed as seriously anti-social behaviour in any workplace.''

A council spokesperson said: “Ms Start's employment with the authority was terminated immediately upon an investigation commencing.”