Drivers in England face £60 fine for parking 11 seconds over time limit

Drivers in England face £60 fine for parking 11 seconds over time limit
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


A pensioner has been slapped with a £60 penalty for parking ‘11 seconds’ over a time limit. The driver had visited the UK for the first time in 60 years and was slapped with a huge bill while parking at the Lido in Margate in Kent.

The motorist was fined £60 fine for overstaying in a car park by just 11 seconds. The driver's day was marred when she realised she had parked in the wrong location, the Daily Mail detailed. The driver stated: "We were just looking for the Winter Gardens and realised we needed to go further up the coastline, so had literally stopped the car, got out, realised our mistake, and drove further up."

"It was a nostalgic visit for me and was totally ruined by receiving a £60 fine for pulling in and out of a parking lot,” she said. "I did not see any clear sign in the car park that something like this could happen. There should be a 10 or 15-minute grace period before issuing a ticket."

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In a furious backlash to the incident, a motorist fumed on social media in the wake of the financial reprimand: “There should be allowance of say five minutes. However if someone was a bit longer then there should be an allowance for that - say one minute.

“But if people overstayed the extra allowance on the allowance they should get an allowance on that - say 10 seconds - which should also have an allowance of say one second. Alternatively there is an absolute cut off.”

Another said: “The whole parking management industry lives in the Wild West and runs on a barely legal but wholly immoral business model which maximises the opportunities and use dirty tricks to catch out the motorist and dish out parking charge notices.

“These tricks include 'app only' payment which blatantly discriminates against those without smartphones or who don't have the digital ability to download and use apps, dress up their parking charge notices to look like official fines, or penalty charge notices (which can only be issued by a local authority or the police) and worst of all, because they have this cosy agreement with DVLA.”