Widow fined more than £1,000 by parking wardens after council delays Blue Badge renewal

A wid­ow said she has been fined more than £1,000 in park­ing charges after her local coun­cil did not renew her Blue Badge before the dead­line.

June Olley, 90, from Wap­ping, has been caught in a six months-long ‘lim­bo’ after being hit with dozens of park­ing fines due to a ‘back­log’ at Tow­er Ham­lets coun­cil.

She first applied to renew her Blue Badge in Novem­ber – three months before it expired – after being warned by Tow­er Ham­lets there was an up to 12 week wait to receive a new badge.

But despite lodg­ing the new appli­ca­tion sev­en months ago, she has still not received it and has spent months chas­ing for an update.

But June said she has received no let­ters to her address, which has a 24-hour porter. 

When she asked her doc­tor to write a let­ter to con­firm her dis­abil­i­ty, she was told the coun­cil has to request a form from the doc­tor.

June told It is absolute­ly dev­as­tat­ing. I’m sick to death that they don’t respond, they don’t give any clues. It is stress­ful, it is not nice to get these let­ters about the fines I’ve received.

‘I don’t set out to get a fine, but it hap­pens. Almost once a week.’

June said her out­go­ings are mod­est and her sup­port­ive fam­i­ly would nev­er let her strug­gle with the park­ing fines, but pay­ing them ‘stings’ (Pic­ture: Justin Grif­fith-Williams)

June, who has lived in St Katharine’s Docks for almost 40 years and was born near­by, relies on her car to leave the house as she becomes out of breath when walk­ing. 

She said her car is a life­line for her as she uses it to vis­it her chil­dren and to get to her med­i­ta­tion class­es, which she teach­es week­ly in Hert­ford­shire, and dri­ves her neigh­bours in her block to their med­ical appoint­ments.

As she ‘can’t do any­thing online because I don’t have the facil­i­ty or abil­i­ty,’ her lodger, a Ukrain­ian refugee, sent the renew­al appli­ca­tion in Novem­ber on her behalf.

June told : ‘I didn’t think more of it until mid-Jan­u­ary, until I realised I hadn’t heard back.’

Despite leav­ing mes­sages on sev­er­al coun­cil num­bers, she says she didn’t hear back.

‘Then end of Jan­u­ary came, and I start­ed get­ting more anx­ious and chased even more,’ she said

She said she vis­it­ed the Town Hall in Whitechapel in Jan­u­ary for advice, where she was told by staff to send a prompt, and then in Feb­ru­ary she received a call say­ing that it would be resolved in 10 days, but nev­er heard back.

For the past six months, June has been using her car as nor­mal, with the expired Blue Badge glued to her win­dow with a hand­writ­ten note explain­ing her sit­u­a­tion, but it has been large­ly ignored by traf­fic war­dens.

‘Occa­sion­al­ly, you get a war­den who turns a blind eye, but often they give you a tick­et,’ she said.

‘I end up pay­ing, because I can­not just be stuck in my flat.’

In the end, her son end­ed up sub­mit­ting a new appli­ca­tion after June ‘moaned about it to every­body,’ but she is still wait­ing to hear back.

June said she is lucky for being able to afford the fines, mean­ing she hasn’t had to deal with bailiffs, but she feels ‘indig­nant’ for any­one else less for­tu­nate caught in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

She added: ‘There’s a lot of pres­sure and adver­tis­ing for elder­ly peo­ple liv­ing alone, as I am, to make sure that you socialise as much as pos­si­ble and that you take exer­cise. 

‘I joined the local gym, where there’s a superb guy who does a small class for elder­ly peo­ple, and I go twice a week. There’s a com­mu­ni­ty cof­fee morn­ing I go to in the morn­ings.  

‘I real­ly have worked on doing all the right things. I have quite a good social life, I go to the the­atre and I have good friends.  

But every­thing I do requires my car, because I can’t real­ly go any­where except by my car.’ 

A spokesper­son from Tow­er Ham­lets Coun­cil said: ‘We are sor­ry to hear about Ms Olley’s expe­ri­ence and under­stand how impor­tant a valid Blue Badge is for her inde­pen­dence and well­be­ing.

‘To process a Blue Badge renew­al, appli­cants must pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion to con­firm their con­tin­ued eli­gi­bil­i­ty. In Ms Olley’s case, we sent let­ters on March 4 and June 12, 2025, advis­ing that no evi­dence had been received and clear­ly out­lin­ing the steps required to pro­ceed.