Bedford man fined £795 over blue badge fraud after 191-mile walk

A man who successfully applied for a blue badge days before embarking on a hike across Wales has been fined £795 for fraud.

After he applied to renew the badge, council officers saw a newspaper report of an attack by cows on Paul Gregory, 51, on a 191-mile walk in Cumbria.

Gregory, from Bedford, was a member of the town's mountaineering club and had claimed he could only walk 200 metres.

Luton magistrates imposed a £60 victim surcharge and 150 hours unpaid work.

He was also given a one-year supervision order and must undergo 19 sessions of a "thinking skills" programme.

Luton magistrates heard he applied to renew his disabled person's badge, saying short walks left him breathless.

Gregory, of College Road in Bedford, pleaded guilty to two counts of dishonestly obtaining a blue badge by "misrepresenting [his] physical abilities" - falsely claiming he could not walk for more than a few minutes.

But investigators found he had been on numerous walking trips with the Bedford Mountaineering Club whilst he both held, and was applying to renew, his badge, Bedford Borough Council said.

Officers found a press article featured in the West Moorland Gazette in 2012, external, which stated the "experienced walker" had been on the third day of a 191-mile walk from Cumbria to North Yorkshire when he was "knocked over by four cows in a field at the edge of Shap" in Cumbria.