Two drivers who used dead disabled people’s blue badges to park have been spared potential police charges.
South Ayrshire Council investigators seized the badges from the pair after discovering they were being misused.
The council’s senior investigations officer Douglas Urquhart said the council decided not to seek prosecution because they were aged in their 80s, a meeting heard.
The council’s corporate fraud team investigated six cases of blue badge misuse over the past six months.
The probes led to four badges being recovered and two organisation badges not being renewed. Mr Urquhart told the Audit & Governance Panel the firms were not using the badges “properly.”
Most of the cases were spotted by parking wardens who noticed the badges were no longer valid. They reported their concerns to the council fraud squad who launched investigations.
Mr Urquhart presented details of the team’s work carried out between October 2018 to March this year . Other probes looked into business rates, tenants abandoning council homes with unpaid rent and alleged fraud by council employees.
A paper presented to councillors said: “The CFT (Corporate Fraud Team) is a specialist investigative unit with responsibility for proactively investigating all types of corporate fraud against the council.”
