Driver will pay thousands to beat £100 Kent car park fine over '22-hour' stay which was half an hour

A furious driver says he is prepared to pay thousands to fight a £100 parking charge he was slapped with after staying in a retail park for ‘just half an hour’.

Lawrence Carnie, 58, has been on a nine-month crusade after he was handed the fine for a ’22-hour’ stay at a car park in Dartford, Kent in June last year.

The car park is free for three hours but he claims he was never logged leaving the first time so was hit with the charge for overstaying, as to the system it look as if he arrived at 3.20pm on June 10 and left at 1.30pm the next day.

He appealed the parking enforcers, Group Nexus, and the independent adjudicator, Parking On Private Land Appeals (POPLA), but was rejected both times.

Mr Carnie, from Dartford, contacted the British Parking Association, who represent Nexus, about the alleged issues, but they denied any problems with the system.

Undeterred, he is carrying on his battle and has sought legal help to fight the fine over his stay at the Tower Retail Park car park.

He said: ‘If I bumped into you in the street and said “give me £100” you wouldn’t do it.

‘That’s what’s happened here, they’re asking for £100 for not being there. It’s just so wrong what this company is doing.’

Source of data and images: dailymail