A driver who visited Balmaha for a day trip with his girlfriend last summer is facing a £100 fine - after missing the time to register his car by less than two minutes.
Joe Taylor, from Cumbernauld, visited the Stirlingshire village to go paddleboarding with his partner in July last year and decided to make use of the overflow car park installed to reduce the dangers posed by illegal parking in the area.
After parking up, the pair proceeded to stay in their cars for a couple of minutes to debate whether it was the right location to move their gear from before Joe’s girlfriend got out of the car to pay.
After enjoying their day out, Joe was left stunned when a £100 fine popped through his letterbox and following unsuccessful appeals to car park operators Civil Enforcement Ltd and then POPLA - he has been left with few options left to turn to.
Joe said: “There were loads of cars all over the place getting tickets and the car park didn’t seem that busy compared to everywhere else.
“My girlfriend said the machine didn’t let her put in all of the registration so she put in the first two letters, we paid the £5 or £6 and put the ticket up in our window.
“We got the fine through the door two weeks later and we were shown the times of when we went in so we appealed to them and they sent back a massive spiel about how we hadn’t bought our ticket within the first 15 minutes of arriving and didn’t put in the full registration.
“I recognise that we never put in the full plate, but we showed full intent to pay for our parking throughout and nothing in our actions said that we weren’t intending to pay.”
On the fine letter given to Joe, the operators state that Joe arrived in the car park at 2.40pm - with Joe’s printed ticket showing that it was paid for at 2.57pm, just 17 minutes later.
Joe says the prospect of paying the £100 fine is a tough pill to swallow given the circumstances of the incident and also in the face of rising bills, including moving house this month.
The story follows on from a similar case reported by the Observer last year of Clare Henderson’s daughter Katie, who was stung with a three-figure fine after a trip to watch the sunset over Loch Lomond, despite the car park having no charge beyond 5.30pm.
Joe added: “Being one minute, 52 seconds late to buy a ticket has cost us a fine like this.”
The Observer was unable to reach Civil Enforcement Ltd for a comment on this story.
