Supermarket parking limits 'breach' disability laws

The UK's big supermarkets are breaking disability laws by having strict time limits in about a third of their car parks, charities have told the BBC.

Private firms run some of the parking areas for Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons and customers face penalty charges for overstaying.

But under the Disability Discrimination Act, businesses need to make extra allowances for disabled people.

The supermarkets say they will review their policies on disabled parking.

Supermarkets are increasingly using private parking firms and automatic number plate recognition systems to limit customer parking, often to two hours.

'Acknowledge problem'

The restrictions are to discourage drivers from abusing the free parking spaces.

A survey for BBC Breakfast suggests that about one-third of the car parks that impose time limits do not give disabled people any extra time to do their shopping, which is a breach of the law.

Neil Coyle, from the charity Disability Alliance, said: "Supermarkets need to acknowledge there is a problem, and secondly, very quickly they need to ensure their car parking procedures conform with the law.

"You or I can stamp our feet and say how outrageous it is but at the end of the day there is a law that protects disabled people from this happening."

He said the supermarkets needed to end the "unfair charges" or "they can wait until someone takes a legal case and potentially face a considerable compensation case".

The only similar complaint I ever heard of in Coventry was about the Co-Op car park in Queen Victoria Road. It was often cited as a reason for shopping at Fine Fare (later Morrisons) instead of the Co-Op.

Disabled parking bays are abused wherever you go and it's infuriating. A lot of them are used by spouses waiting for their other half to come out of the store - because they're too lazy to walk
I can't see how this will be implemented. I'd have thought 2 hrs. was more than enough time for someone to do their shopping in a supermarket - disabled or not.