New measures to tackle disabled parking fraud will be announced today after growing evidence that the system is too vulnerable to abuse.

The Department for Transport is expected to tighten the eligibility criteria and to make it harder to forge blue badges. Local authorities estimate that up to half of blue badges are being used fraudulently, with the most common cases involving a driver illegally using a badge owned by a relative.

This is hard to detect because an authority must prove that the driver was not picking up or dropping off the relative. But yesterday, Wandsworth council in South London successfully prosecuted a solicitor after using a video surveillance team to monitor his movements.

Mohammed Lodhi, who was a partner at A to Z Law Services in Balham High Road, was given a three-month suspended jail sentence, fined £1,000, told to pay £1,989 in costs and ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid community service.

He had pleaded guilty to seven offences relating to blue badge abuse after being caught using his disabled wife’s badge to park free of charge in designated disabled parking bays while working at his firm’s offices.

He was covertly filmed on six separate days using the badge. At no time was he accompanied by his wife.

When interviewed on tape, he denied any misuse of the badge and claimed that he only used it when travelling with his wife. He elected to have the fraud offences heard at the Crown Court but, when he appeared, pleaded guilty to all charges.

Guy Senior, the council’s transport spokesman, said: “People like Mr Lodhi who manipulate and abuse the system should expect no mercy from this council or the courts.

“Our team of investigators has successfully prosecuted more than 700 parking cheats whose selfish and illegal behaviour deprives genuinely disabled people from parking spaces and brings the whole blue badge scheme into disrepute.”

Wandsworth’s investigators found that two thirds of blue badge misuse was by friends or relatives of the badge holder. Many of the remaining incidents involved stolen badges, which sell on the black market for up to £500.

The investigators uncovered a number of drivers using computer-scanned copies of genuine badges and others who had altered the expiry date or were using badges belonging to people who had died.

Last year, the DfT announced that it was redesigning the badge and adding a holo-gram to make it harder to forge.

In 2006, traffic wardens gained special powers to challenge drivers using disabled-parking badges.

Drivers are obliged to hand over badges for inspection and give an explanation if the disabled person is not present.

The rear of the badge, which cannot be seen from outside the car, contains the holder’s photograph, name and address.

There are more than 2.5 million blue badges in circulation. They can be used in any vehicle transporting or collecting the badge-holder.

Mobilise, a charity for disabled drivers and passengers, has urged the Government to tighten the procedure for issuing badges.

Local authorities rely on a GP’s judgment of whether an individual is eligible, but doctors come under pressure from patients to recommend them for a badge.

The rules state that, to qualify, a person must have a “permanent and substantial disability which causes inability to walk or have considerable difficulty in walking”.

Mobilise wants badges to be issued by a dedicated central authority after the applicant has seen an independent occupational therapist.

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