A motorist was furious to return to his car and find a warden issuing a parking ticket - only 30 seconds after he'd parked there.
29-year-old Andrew Oxley had found a space in Exeter Central Train Station car park, and had gone to pay for a ticket. On his return he found a warden writing out a ?75 penalty fine.
The female warden, from Premier Parking Solutions (PPS), was taking a photograph of his car and warned him that failure to pay within seven days would see the fine jump to ?100.
PPS has been accused of overzealous ticket issuing before, and was recently criticised for handing a ?75 fine to a man in the same car park who had left his car for four minutes. He too was paying for a ticket at the time.
In this case Mr Oxley is refusing to pay the fine, and is willing to take the matter through the courts. His appeal to PPS has so far yielded no response and PPS has not commented on the case.
Mr Oxley said: "The only thing I can say is that I must be the only driver in Exeter to be done for parking for leaving his car for a matter of seconds. I've worked it out that PPS are demanding ?3 per second."
According to research by car insurer LV, in 2010 UK drivers paid almost ?60m in parking fines when they actually had grounds for appeal.
Comment