Hi here is a link for the new mobility blue badge from June (or is it July!!??) this year.

If you scroll down to : Blue Badge - A consultation easy read 1MB

and open that up, you will see on page 8 of the word doc that it says:

These consultations will be about these things.
• Making a new Blue Badge.
• Letting people who find it very hard to understand things, and who are not safe near roads, to get a Blue Badge.
• Letting people who cannot walk very much and whose condition will last for at least 1 year get a Blue Badge.

So point 2 will make it easier for children on the spectrum to access this scheme (in my opinion).

You can leave your views on the consultation too.

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Also they are considering it for under 3's.

i do hope so,would make life a lot easier for me

Thanks loulou for that information very helpful. x

I actually think it may make it HARDER for children with autism.
On the basis of this from the document:

We are making funding available to local authorities to encourage the take up of independent medical assessments

And

There is a consensus of opinion in favour of the use of independent medical assessors. It was recommended to DfT by the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee,19 and has been supported by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee and the Department of Health’s Care Services Efficiency Delivery Programme.

In other words they will want to arrange for your child to see there independant doctor who may not be very clued up on autism and other conditions where a phyical disability is not evident.
Members are only well aware of the DLA tribunals in which often the doctors are not aware of conditions such as Autism and this will be a same style system and make it harder.
Whereas under the current system specialists in autism can support an application.

I think this will make the system harder to navigate for many and will take away the experts views on the application.


Also this part was intresting:

It should be noted that there is no guarantee that a child who qualified for a Blue Badge under the BME / access to vehicle criteria would continue to qualify once they reached the age of three. This is because the qualifying criteria for HRMCDLA and those for the BME / access to vehicle criteria are not necessarily comparable.

I thought you had to take your child with you for the assessment for blue badge anyway - we do in this borough. They have their very own crack pot docs on hand too!!