Driver says Northampton supermarket smart parking cameras are not so clever after incorrect fine

Tad Dobraszczyk, 70, of Moulton was having lunch at Waitrose in Kingsthorpe on Monday, March 26 before leaving to attend a business meeting at the Guildhall at 2pm.

After returning home from work that evening, he stopped off at Waitrose to do his food shopping, when just days later he received a £60 fine through his letterbox.

The Smart Parking cameras recorded Mr Dobraszczyk's Audi A3 leaving the Kingsthorpe Shopping Centre car park at 1.53pm and captured him leaving the same car park again at 6.41pm - failing to detect two visits to the same car park in one day.

The architect said: "They don't seem to operate properly and they don't record people who visit twice.

"And, also on the last occasion, they snapped me saying that I was going to the car park when I was actually leaving."

The maximum stay for shoppers is two hours in this car park - with no returns within two hours.

"So if the cameras don't know when you're coming or going it's really difficult for them to prosecute anybody," he added.

Mr Dobraszczyk said this is the third time in the last 12 months Smart Parking, based in Marston Green, have issued the 70-year-old with an incorrect parking charge notice.

He said: "It's a universal problem across the whole country and the moment.

"These cameras don't work very well - people are coughing up lots and lots of money. If they can't prove they are elsewhere parking are taking money under false pretences."

Mr Dobraszczyk has appealed three parking fines successfully - and is planning to appeal this fine too - but he said the fines will not put him off returning.

Smart Parking was approached for comment yesterday.