A family was issued a parking fine despite being locked out of a car park due to a mix-up with signs. NCP promised not to charge people whose vehicles were stuck overnight on February 11 but a penalty has been issued anyway.
Terry Martin and Kirsty Ferguson were visiting Exeter with their family when they became stranded outside the NCP car park on Market Street, DevonLive reports. NCP's website, and Google, stated the car park closed at 6.30pm, but the site was locked up in accordance with new signs which said the place shut at 6pm.
A spokesperson for NCP said: "We’d like to apologise profusely for this situation. The site is actually supposed to close at 6:30pm, and so the website is correct. However the signage on the site is not, the signage states it will be closing at 6pm when in fact it is due to close at 6:30pm.
"This has been a recent decision and the team were awaiting new signage. It shouldn’t normally affect customers as the time of closure is actually 6:30pm. However, on Saturday we were alerted to the site being closed at 6:22pm. We sent the team back to the site to reopen it as soon as we were aware this was the case.
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"Signage will be changed to reflect the later closing time of 6:30pm. We will make sure that no customer is PCN’d due to this matter and once again offer our sincere apologies for this experience."
But Terry and Kirsty - who were visiting Exeter with their children, aged two and four, as well as Kirsty's pregnant sister Hayley and her three-year-old son - have since been sent a PCN for £100, reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days. They have a deadline of March 27 to either pay or appeal, the letter says.
NCP said the fine was one of four that was not correctly cancelled. This happened because they picked up their vehicles the day after the car park was locked early.
A spokesperson for NCP said: "NCP has investigated this and can see that whilst we cancelled all PCNs issued on the day the car park had been locked early, we unfortunately didn’t correctly cancel four PCNs for customers who picked their cars up and exited the car park the following day.
"The contravention for no payment is recognised on exit, and as they exited on Sunday 12th they should also have been voided along with all exits on the 11th. We will immediately cancel the four PCNs which parked on Sat 11th and left on Sunday 12th and send cancellation letters today. We sincerely apologise for this error."
