Retired garage owner furious at parking fine despite paying for ticket

Christine Pollard, 77, decided to enjoy a visit to Portreath beach, meet a friend, and enjoy an ice cream. The grandmother parked her Ford Fiesta at the Waterfront Inn car park on May 28. This is not the seafront car park known for its pay-on-exit service, and Christine she found the pay machine difficult to use as it persistently required her to enter her registration number for a contactless payment.

Giving up on contactless, she returned to her vehicle and dug out £2 in cash to feed into the machine for a two-hour stay.

The former proprietor of Four Lanes garage near Redruth, which she ran with her husband Colin, was then shocked to receive a letter in the post one month later from Liverpool-based car park operator Civil Enforcement Ltd. The letter insisted she pay a parking charge notice of £60 within a fortnight or risk having to cough up £100.

Christine has said she has no intention of paying the fee when she has already paid for her parking and didn’t overstay or flout any other parking rules.

She told CornwallLive: “It’s not my fault if their machine did not work very well. I tried several times to put in my registration number and to pay with my card but it kept going back to the beginning asking me to enter my reg number. I know the internet connection in Portreath is quite poor so the card reader probably did not work that well but in the end I had enough of this malarkey and went back to the car to scrounge some cash.

“I paid for two hours just so I’d have an ice-cream with my friend. I didn’t stay for two hours but these car parking people said I had overstayed by more than 10 minutes when I’m just trying to use their machine. It’s not like I did a runner. I would not dream of not paying for parking. I wanted to pay and I did.”

Following her return from a Devon caravan holiday, Christine responded to Civil Enforcement’s first letter, dated June 6, explaining her predicament.

In her letter, which she showed to CornwallLive along with the parking ticket, she said: “As you can see I didn’t park without payment. The reason for the time delay was that the parking machine would not work properly as it kept losing contact. I tried several times, putting in my details many times. It was very frustrating. In the end I managed to get some cash and pay that way.

“I never ever park without paying and as you can see I did pay. If your machine was working properly I would not have wasted valuable minutes trying to pay with my card.”

On appealing against the PCN, the company rejected her claim, arguing that her struggle to pay surpassed the 10-minute grace period. However, even accounting for this delay, Christine insists her time on site was still less than the two hours she had paid for.

The car park operator suggested she could appeal to industry watchdog POPLA, but she found the process too complex. Christine went on to receive a second letter identical to the first from Civil Enforcement Ltd, dated June 23, which technically extends her appeal period to 14 days from the date of the latest letter.

She said: “I really don’t see why I should pay this charge when I’ve paid already.

“Especially when it’s their machine that’s not working. I’m 77, I really don’t need this type of aggravation in my life.”

CornwallLive has contacted Civil Enforcement Ltd for a comment and an explanation but hasn’t had a response.

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