Drivers let off tickets (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Drivers let off tickets

10:35am Friday 30th March 2012 in Chippenham

MOTORISTS who received parking tickets earlier this month in Chippenham have been let off the hook after a Wiltshire Council blunder.

A parking warden’s machine malfunctioned on March 17 and began sending out fines with the wrong dates on them.

Edy Zwart, 48, from Saxon Court, was one of the lucky few.

Mr Zwart, who works as an accountant in London, said: “I was out shopping in town and had parked in the car park round the back of Tesco.

“I paid for parking at the machine and asked my nephew to put the ticket in the window.

“I think he must have put it in the driver’s side window rather than on the dashboard.

“When we got back to the car we saw we had got the ticket. I thought nothing of it at first and drove home.

“I looked at the information on the ticket properly and it took a while before it hit home and I realised it had the wrong date on.”

Mr Zwart’s ticket said it had been issued on April 15, almost a month ahead.

He said: “At first I thought someone had put it on there as a joke and that it wasn’t a real ticket.

“Then I realised it was genuine and thought they must have post-dated the ticket for some reason.”

He went online to challenge the ticket, sending the council what he described as a “very sarcastic” response.

He said: “Some people just pay these things regardless, or don’t check them properly.

“I saw that at least one or two other cars in the car park that day were issued tickets.”

A Wiltshire Council spokesperson said that ten incorrectly-dated tickets were issued on that date. They were all £70 fines, which would have been reduced to £35 if paid early.

He said the council are unable to contact the people who were issued tickets but confirmed they had all been cancelled.

He said: “We noticed the discrepancy before we were contacted by anyone.

“Some contacted us afterwards and we told them the charges had been cancelled.”