Fraud busters cracking down on Lambeth motorists who wrongly use parking permits for elderly and disabled drivers have scooped a national award.

Lambeth Council’s parking fraud investigations team has successfully prosecuted more than 350 motorists for blue badge fraud since 2006.

Blue badges are reserved for elderly and disabled motorists to make parking easier, but the system is regularly abused, denying people the parking spaces they are entitled to.

Drivers use stolen or counterfeit badges, or badges that don’t belong to them.

Now the council’s successful crackdown has see its fraud team named ‘Enforcement Team of the Year’ at the British Parking Awards..

The team works closely with the borough’s parking wardens to monitor blue badges being used on the streets and checking them against databases to ensure they are being used by the people they belong to.

It also carry out operations with the police to identify offenders.

Some 78 per cent of the people prosecuted for committing blue badge fraud were from outside Lambeth.