Council admits six years of wrong parking tickets – and the refund bill heads for £300,000
Elmbridge Borough Council in Surrey reckons it wrongly fined drivers more than 9,000 times since 2020. Over 1,800 people have already asked for their money back.
There is no more British emotion than the quiet fury of finding a parking ticket on your windscreen. Now imagine finding out, years later, that it shouldn’t have been there at all.
Elmbridge Borough Council in Surrey has paid out more than £60,000 in refunds after admitting that parking fines were issued by mistake in several of its car parks – a mix-up stretching back to January 2020.
The council estimates more than 9,000 fines were wrongly issued. Drivers ticketed between 8am and 9am, or 6pm and 7pm, in a long list of car parks across Esher, Cobham, Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge may be owed money. So may anyone fined on a Sunday since 24 April 2022 at a slightly different long list of car parks. Ashley Park gets its own special time window, just to keep everyone on their toes.
More than 1,800 people have claimed so far, and the whole scheme is expected to cost about £308,000.
Councillor Kirsty Hewens said: “I am sorry this situation occurred and the inconvenience it has caused. Our focus remains on ensuring everyone affected receives the refund they are entitled to.”
If you parked in Elmbridge at any point this decade, it may be worth a rummage through the glovebox. That crumpled ticket you swore at in 2021 could finally be worth something.
