GWR apologises for parking tickets given at Westbury station

Not enough notice was given about the changes to parking at Westbury Railway Station, say Great Western Railway and all tickets issued have now been cancelled.

Local man Neil Griffiths got in touch with the White Horse News after he was given a parking ticket at Westbury Railway Station having not noticed that Station Approach was no longer ‘Pay and Display’ but now ‘Permit Holders Only’.

Neil said, “I got back Monday evening to find a ticket on my car, which I couldn’t understand as I’d paid and was neatly in a space I’d parked in for years. However, when I looked along the row, every single car had a ticket. The same thing happened for the rest of that week.

“Essentially what they’ve done is quietly amend the signage near the parking spaces on the Station Approach to say ‘Permit Holders Only.’ This stretch is most commonly used by regular parkers such as myself, who have been parking in the same spot for years, and so it wouldn’t have occurred to us that the signs have been altered. There was no effort to publicise the change they made, so none of us noticed.

“I got in touch with APCOA assuming that they’d realise this was a genuine mistake made by a large number of their regular (and normally very compliant!) parking customers, and let them off as long as they didn’t do it again – but no. I had a letter from them to say the fine stands and I have to pay up!

“Despite saying they ‘carefully considered’ my evidence, they neglect the fact that they have just amended the wording on the signage to change it from regular parking spaces to ‘Permit Holders Only’, and didn’t publicise that at all. Now, I have been a regular user of the car park since 2002 and don’t tend to re-read the signs every day I park there as I don’t expect the wording to have been changed without anyone publicising that in some way!

“The mere fact that every single car, pretty much without exception, that has parked in this area over that week had a ticket, must indicate they need to make it a bit clearer they have changed the designation of these spaces! They couldn’t have been more effective in alienating their most loyal and long standing customers.”

Parking company APCOA who manage Westbury Station and Great Western Railway issued a joint statement after the White Horse News got in touch.

They said, “As part of improvements to station parking, including the installation of automatic number plate recognition, we have had to swap some pay and display spaces to permit holders only. The swap enables pay and display customers to be closer to the ticket machines. New signage was installed to make people aware of the change at the beginning of April.

“For an interim period, notices advising customers of the change should have been issued prior to a Penalty Charge Notice, and we are sorry. These penalty notices have been rescinded, and we will continue to issue advisory notices for a further 14 days.”

Neil added, “Thank you for taking this up. When I arrived at the station this morning they had painted ‘Permit Holders Only’ on the ground next to the spaces, so it is now clear. They should have done that from the start.”