Dear Editor,
My example of what I believe to be an unjust car parking fine.
At 10.25am I received a parking fine of £100 for parking in a disabled bay with no Blue badge displayed in my car. I had been having a coffee in Castlepoint Shopping centre, Bournemouth, for 30 minutes that morning.
There is no charge for parking in Castlepoint for less than three hours.
I had had an eye operation at 9am that morning, the eye was still covered by a bandage and my other eye had had drops in which meant I could not see very well. My friend was driving my car for me.
I’m 90 years and walk with 2 sticks. Not seeing very well, I had difficulty getting out of the car, and so forgot to put my blue badge on the dash board.
I appealed against the parking fine in a letter outlining why I forgot the blue badge and pointing out that we had only parked for 30 minutes and if we had parked in a non disabled bay we could have parked for 3 hours without incurring a parking fine.
The parking company CPplus( whose address is just a Nottingham post box)
refused to remove the fine, telling me that I should have seen the notices relevant to disabled parking charges. They also said that they ” have NOT chosen to participate in the Ombudsman service for disputes about parking fines”. This means that the only way I can challenge the fine further is to appeal to POPLA, a parking on private land appeal system. But POPLA criteria does not deal with my circumstances.
So I’m given 14 days to pay a reduced fine of £20.
So, a non-disabled person has no charge for parking, but disabled person who can’t walk very far gets fined for forgetting the badge.
I did send photos of my blue badge.
The whole attitude of the CP plus company was as if I’ve committed a serious crime, even after I had explained.
I also note that the Dolphin shopping centre in Poole charges have imposed a minimum two hour charge of £2.40, giving no option of parking for less than two hours.
This discriminates against people like me who do not have the option of parking further away and walking to the shops.
Pat Brandwood
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