Supermarket looks at parking system after fine ‘wrongly issued’
A RUNCORN supermarket has said it will look into a potential problem with the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system wrongly issuing parking tickets.
Mike Holden, of Halton Lodge, said he received a £70 fine in the post, which accused him of having parked for seven hours at the store when in reality he had made two separate trips to the West Lane store seven hours apart.
One theory for the issue’s cause is the ANPR cameras might not be able to read number plates when vehicles are close together and the line of sight is blocked.
Similar problems were reported in 2012 when taxi drivers were left fuming over repeat journeys being registered as breaches of the threehour parking limit.
Mr Holden said: “I had a nice letter saying I owe £70 for parking in Asda on ● a Sunday for seven hours.
“I went into Asda for fuel, went out, went to Speke, to Ellesmere Port, back to Speke, to Widnes and to Runcorn, back into Asda for a car wash but they had none.
“Either the cameras are faulty or they’ve not been set up properly and they’re misreading plates.
“While I was having this rescinded other people were queueing up to do the same thing.”
He said: “Asda are good to give them their due – (they said) ‘if we’ve got the form we’ll cancel it’.”
An Asda Runcorn spokeswoman said: “As far as I’m aware there’s not a problem bu we’ll look into it.”
A ParkingEye spokeswoman, said: “If people feel there may be mitigating circumstances surrounding their parking charge or have a query about the nature of the charge, we encourage them to submit an appeal and instructions about how to do this are detailed on all communications and on our website.”