Student midwife describes her ‘unbelievable’ stress after being hit with car park fine

Gemma Norton, a mum-of-two from Standish, parked up in the Rodney Street car park, a 24-hour pay and display facility operated by Euro Car Parks, and paid contactless for 12 hours.

She was shocked to receive a penalty notice three weeks later to say that she hadn't paid a car parking fee, along with a demand to pay a fine of £100 (reduced to £60 if paid within two weeks).

Gemma, 42, said: "I didn’t still have the ticket, so I looked on my bank account and £1.40 had come out not the 12 hours that I had put into the machine for that day. I had paid contactless on my phone so just assumed that the amount that I had inputted into the machine would have been saved.

"I am a student midwife and have an insane amount of work on. I was so worried, this affected my studies, I didn’t have the money to pay and had to use my son's bank savings to pay the parking ticket even though I knew that this car park is a scam.

"I couldn’t afford to be worrying about the ticket.

"The stress was unbelievable and my thoughts were that I would contact them after I had paid the fine, but can’t get hold of them.

"There are Facebook groups set up by people who have been hit with fines by this operator.

"I have seen hundreds of people who inputted an amount and it took 10p less out of their account therefore they received a £100 fine.

"How can they get away with this?"

Euro Car Parks were approached for comment but did not respond.