A furious mum has told how she was slapped with a £100 parking fine after pulling over for less than a minute to take an emergency call from her daughter.
The 36-year-old mum of five instantly pulled over in the nearest safe place after her mobile phone started ringing.
However, she was shocked to receive a PCN notice a couple of days later from a parking firm named ES Parking Enforcement Ltd – telling her that she had to pay £100 within 28 days, or £60 within 14 days.
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She lodged an appeal but ES Parking Enforcement rejected it, saying that photographic evidence showed that she “did not park within a marked parking bay”.
The woman, from Bamber Bridge in Lancashire, told Lancs Live: ”My phone rang, and I was panicking thinking, 'oh my God I need to answer the phone', so I literally just looked around and parked up… I was literally on the phone for a couple of seconds.
"I pulled away, and literally, in that couple of seconds, whoever it was that was on that car park behind Morrisons car park had photographed me. I was literally less than a minute.
“[My daughter] was having a panic attack and I couldn’t answer – it’s the law to pull over to answer your phone and I did that, and it was literally less than a minute. I appealed, but within a couple of days they wrote back and rejected.”
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While there was the option of taking the claim to an independent appeal, there was always the chance that an unsuccessful fine could actually increase the amount payable so, at this point, she chose to pay the reduced fine within 14 days as she could not afford to take the risk.
She still believes she was in the right though, and added: "At that moment, my priority was to answer the phone, and to make sure that she was safe. I was stationary and I was following the law, and as quickly as possible.
“I wasn’t causing an obstruction, I wasn’t stopping anyone else on the car park and there wasn’t a taxi waiting to pull in and I wasn’t in somebody else’s space, and it was literally like a minute, but it cost me a lot of money. I’m waiting for number three, because everything happens in threes."
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"It's wrong on so many levels," she complained. "There's no phone number or a person that you can speak to and explain the situation; there's just someone at the end of an email clicking on something.
"Are they reading it and understanding what people are saying? It just seemed to be very quickly rejected and it's intimidating and frustrating."
To make matters worse, the mum of five was then stung for the second time a few weeks later when she says she received a £90 fine for allegedly overstaying in a car park outside the B&M store on Derby Street in Preston on June 28. She said she is currently appealing against that fine.
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