'Top Gear' sorry over disabled parking row

Top Gear has said sorry after presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May were seen in the motoring show parking their cars in disabled parking bays.

Series producer Andy Wilman "unreservedly" apologised for the incident but claimed that the production team had been given permission to use the bays by the car park owners.

During the programme aired on Sunday, Clarkson and May were shown using parking spaces labelled for disabled users in a segment on electric cars.

According to The Daily Telegraph, a disabled motorists' charity said that the presenters "didn't have a passing care that a disabled person might have needed those spaces".

Jim Rawlings, of Disabled Motoring UK, told the paper: "I'm sure the last thing on Jeremy Clarkson's mind was that he was parked in a disabled bay. The abuse of non-disabled people parking in disabled bays is rife, and with people like Jeremy Clarkson and James May doing this other motorists will just think they can just park wherever they like."

A total of 18 people are understood to have complained to the BBC about the issue, with the matter compounded by the fact that the programme also featured a segment in which Richard Hammond met disabled soldiers attempting to reach the gruelling Dakar Rally.

In a blog posting on the Top Gear website, Wilman said that the team was given permission by the car park owners to use the disabled bays as "a quiet spot to film in", while there were three other disabled spaces which "remained empty throughout".

"For those who are cross with us, please direct your anger towards myself and the production team, rather than at Jeremy and James," he said.

"Both presenters expressed deep concern to the film crew and I about using the disabled bays prior to filming, because of the disrespectful impression it would convey.

"They only capitulated when we assured them the parking had been approved by the owner, and that the disabled bay markings would not appear on television. This was our fault, not theirs, and we unreservedly apologise to all the viewers we have upset as a consequence."

In a separate posting, Wilman also responded to a report in The Times today claiming that Nissan had objected to May's review of its Leaf electric car, in which he showed the vehicle running out of battery. Andy Palmer, Nissan's executive vice-president, said the episode was misleading, but Wilman denied this.

"We were fully aware that Nissan could monitor the state of the battery charge and distance travelled via on-board software," he said.

"The reporter in The Times seems to suggest this device caught us out, but we knew about it all the time, as Nissan will confirm. We weren't bothered about it because we had nothing to hide."

Wilman added: "We never at any point in the film said that were testing the range claims of the vehicles, nor did we say that the vehicles wouldn't achieve their claimed range.

"We also never said at any time that we were hoping to get to our destination on one charge. We never said what the length of the journey was, where we had started from, or how long we had been driving for at the start of the film, so again, no inference about the range can be gleaned from our film. We absolutely refute that we were misleading viewers over the charge/range, and we stand by the consumer points raised in the film."

Top Gear is no stranger to controversy, as in June the BBC's editorial watchdog rebuked the motoring show over comments made about Mexicans that caused a minor diplomatic storm.

Sunday's edition of Top Gear also featured the return of Ben Collins, who controversially left the show after publishing a memoir of his time as The Stig.