A FURIOUS driver has been slapped with a £100 parking fine for using a car park for a day – but he says he only stopped for 30 minutes.
Lawrence Carnie, 58, says he visited a Kent retail park car park two days in a row, for 30-minute stints, but was fined for parking for 23 hours.
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The banker is claiming the fine is an error and comes down to issues with the car park’s CCTV.
Lawrence claims he was never logged as leaving the car park the first time, so was hit with the fine for overstaying.
He appealed the fine, but it was rejected by parking enforcers, Group Nexus.
Lawrence is now claiming he has used data to uncover faulty cameras at the car park and that hundreds more drivers could have been incorrectly fined like him.
However, Group Nexus says it’s not possible the data Lawrence was given proved that – and the company is “very confident” in its systems.
The Tower Retail Park car park in Dartford, Kent, that issued the fine on June 10, has a maximum stay of three hours.
Lawrence says he stayed for 30 minutes one day, when he went to buy a TV, and returned the next day for a similar amount of time.
But 10 days later he received a £100 fine.
However, by appealing the penalty through the independent adjudicators, Popla, Group Nexus released a 356-page document showing all activity across that 24-hour period at the Kent car park.
Lawrence says he used his knowledge of analytics and placed all 9,920 entries into a spreadsheet, and made a discovery.
According to the document, Lawrence was spotted entering the car park at 3.20pm on June 10.
He was then seen leaving at 1.30pm the next day with no other data entries for his car.
But, Lawrence says he discovered that 96 cars were recorded going in on June 10 but were not spotted leaving that day.
On June 11, 100 different cars, that hadn’t arrived that day, were seen leaving, he says.
I’m almost on a bit of a crusade at this point
Lawrence Carnie
Lawrence says that means a maximum of 196 people would also have been fined.
He said: “That one night they had 196 cars left unchecked meaning at 3am that car park should’ve been half full.”
The 58-year-old added: “I’m almost on a bit of a crusade at this point.
“I’ve given up on ranting about my fine because I feel I’ve got them.
“How can they be issuing fines off of this? Their data is so bad.
“What I really want is for Group Nexus to cancel all their parking fines from this car park.”
His second appeal is still pending a verdict but Lawrence is confident the adjudicators will vote in his favour.
It is therefore not possible to correctly match visits for any other vehicles from this report.
Group Nexus
However, a Group Nexus spokesman told The Sun: “We use the latest in ANPR and monitoring technology to manage the parking at locations on behalf of our clients.
“If a motorist raises a query we are able to draw on additional data to address it quickly and accurately.”
The spokesman said they examined Lawrence’s original appeal, and found no evidence that his vehicle entered or exited the car park more than once.
He added that the data Lawrence received when appealing through Popla had partially redacted registration numbers.
The spokesman said: “It is therefore not possible to correctly match visits for any other vehicles from this report as the last two or three digits of the vehicle registration numbers are not shown.
“We remain very confident in our process and data to make the correct decisions based on the restrictions set for each of our clients.”
Drivers challenging parking fines is not uncommon.
A furious MP recently hit out at council parking wardens who slapped motorists with fines – after watching them pay for their spot on an app.
A mum also recently slammed her council after being slapped with an “unfair” parking ticket while taking her son to the cricket.
