"Aldershot Centre for Health car parking"

I've been charged £60 for parking at Aldershor Centre for Health when I took my mother to a 15-minute appointment and paid for an hour's ticket.

I took my mother to see her doctor for an 11. 30 appointment. According to Smart Parking I entered the car park at 11. 24am, though the actual ticket which I bought from the machine gives a time of 11. 30am.

We waited until sometime after 12. 10pm to see the doctor. I was aware at this time that we were in danger of coming close to the time that our car parking ticket expired but it would not have been appropriate to leave my mother in case she was called in. She has poor hearing and finds it hard to get up out of a chair and I did not want to leave her to struggle on her own. When she was finally called in I accompanied her so that I could help her walk there, and hear what was said and help her recall it afterwards.

We left her appointment at around 12. 30pm. It was not possible for my mother to hurry as she cannot walk fast and needs to hold on to someone to prevent herself falling. I managed to find a seat for her near the door so that I could fetch the car and bring it to the ‘drop off/pick up’ area. According to Smart Parking I left the car park at 12. 37pm.

Smart Park subsequently sent me a parking charge notice asking me to pay £60.

There are several issues with this, the first one being that their system of monitoring parking does not seem to be working correctly. According to the evidence on their website I exceeded the parking time at 11. 44am which is well within the time given on my ticket. This suggests that they are inaccurate in their monitoring and may well be penalising other people unfairly.

I did end up exceeding the time by a few minutes because of the lengthy delay in my mother being called in to see the doctor and this is another issue. It seems immensely unfair to use a system of car park monitoring which expects people to estimate how long they will park when the amount of time they will need to use the car park is often out of their control. In this case it was perfectly reasonable for my mother and I to believe that an hour would be sufficient for a 15-minute appointment. It was not our fault that the surgery was running so late that we had to wait around 45 minutes to see the doctor. To be then charged £60 for this is disproportionate.

My mother has to use the health centre’s car park. She is too frail to use the bus, does not have the spare money to use a taxi and cannot walk from another car park as I know other people do because of the trouble they have had parking at the health centre.

She is not the only person in this situation and a system of parking which discriminates against the frail and vulnerable seems particularly unsuited to a health centre.

Surely it is unfair to penalise an 87-year-old, ill woman for having to wait for 45 minutes for her appointment.