Warning after Northampton car park wrongly issues fine to innocent driver

A motorist wants to warn anyone using a particular Northampton car park after he was wrongly fined as the cameras did not register his car properly.

Phil Taylor had to force NCP to provide extra photographs of his Ford Ka to prove he had simply driven through St Peter's Way car park to get to the Commercial Street car park.

Mr Taylor, 46, of Queens Park, said: "What I don't want is for someone in a similar position to be made to pay when they don't have to."

At around midday on Sunday, February 2, Mr Taylor went into St Peter's Way car park through the north entrance and left to the south to park in the adjacent car park as he remembered it was free.

An hour or so later, he left the way he came, through St Peter's Way car park from south to north.

Mr Taylor received a PCN a couple of weeks later with pictures of his car entering and leaving through the north entrance, asking for £60 for non-payment, or £100 after 14 days.

"There should have been two other images showing me going out of the car park and going back in to leave town," he said.

Mr Taylor knew he was in the right so decided to submit a data protection request for NCP to provide all pictures of his car in the car park.

Eventually, NCP sent him a third picture of his car - he is not sure what happened to the fourth one - which was enough for the firm to cancel the fine.

Mr Taylor is worried the cameras are not getting the full picture of cars' journeys in St Peter's Way car park with potentially other fines wrongly issued.

He also wants more people to know how to challenge PCNs through data protection requests but insists appellants have to be fast to make sure any photos are not deleted.

"I just want people to be aware of it as they might need to go to that step as quickly as possible or be told they don't hold those images anymore," he said.

NCP has been approached for comment.