'It's isn't fair' - Patients slapped with £100 fines on GP surgery car park
A couple have received two £100 parking fines from the same GP surgery - after attending appointments just four days apart. Tittensor couple Jennifer Burnside and Brian Freeman have both been slapped with the parking fines after attending Mansion House Surgery, in Stone.
The surgery has brought in parking restrictions after becoming sick of drivers using its car park to walk into Stone town centre - leaving patients with nowhere to park. It means patients must record their car registration at the surgery to avoid a parking fine.
But 77-year-old Jennifer says she 'distinctly remembers' registering her vehicle before her appointment on August 23. The machine was not working when 81-year-old Brian attended the surgery on August 27 and he recorded his visit in the surgery’s logbook.
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Now Mansion House Surgery is asking parking firm Civil Enforcement to cancel all fines issued for August 27. But Jennifer has already paid the August 23 fine too and is unlikely to get refunded.
Jennifer said: “The surgery is always so busy. There must be many others affected by this. I searched for the firm, but of course it’s one that you can’t call. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and it makes me wonder if these little pieces of paper saying you have a £100 parking fine really have legal weight."
Mansion House Surgery says it can provide patients with proof that they attended the surgery for an appointment in order to challenge the penalty charges. However, if fines have already been paid on days when the machine was working, the money will not be returned by Civil Enforcement.
Practice manager Carol Rodgers said: “When you come on to the car park there are numerous signs displayed to make sure everyone knows where they go, how to input, and it’s essential every visit that we do that. If patients have attended for an appointment we give them an appointment card and they also get a reminder on their phone which is proof of an appointment that they can take a screenshot of and send it to the parking firm as part of the appeal.
“The only problem we have is that, if someone pays the fine because they want to pay it early, Civil Enforcement takes that as acceptance from the patient that they are liable, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. On occasions when the machine has been down and patients have paid the fine, we have asked the company to give that money back, and we are in a battle with them to do that.
“The reason we’ve done this is that people park on the car park and walk into town, and patients who are poorly, pregnant or have children they need to bring into the practice cannot park in the car park because other people have taken those spaces and walked off into town. We were finding that the car park was becoming ridiculous. Doing this has meant that our vulnerable patients have places to park. We are protecting patients’ access to the practice.”
On the machine being out of order on August 27, Ms Rodgers added: “We told the car park operator to turn the system off on 27 August, and because they didn’t and they sent those letters out, we are saying that they are at fault and need to refund the patients. On other occasions, patients just need to read the detail. It does say you can appeal if you had an appointment. They can appeal and we would provide them with evidence of the appointment.”