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#Post#: 67896--------------------------------------------------
Euro Car Parks
By: John U.K. Date: April 21, 2025, 7:30 am
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From the Daily Telegraph
HTML https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/20/car-park-firm-accused-targeting-elderly-drivers-fight-back/
Car park firm accused of targeting elderly drivers who won’t
fight back
Despite showing a blue badge, Guy Falkenau, 80, and his wife
were fined £200
Gareth Corfield
Transport Correspondent
20 April 2025 7:52pm BST
247
Guy Falkenau, 80, and wife Lucille were slapped with parking
fines twice in three months despite using a blue badge
A car park firm has been accused of targetting elderly drivers
who are less likely to fight back.
Guy Falkenau, 80, claimed Euro Car Parks discriminated against
him by sending two penalty charges for the car park at the local
theatre, The Glasshouse, in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Despite showing a blue badge on the car’s dash, he was fined
£200 because of a “technical fault”.
He said: “My fear is that if this has happened to me, then
broadly it will have happened to others – and potentially to
others less able to appeal. It’s potentially discriminatory.”
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Euro Car Parks, which manages more than 3,000 sites across the
UK and Ireland, was investigated by the British Parking
Association last month after drivers accused it of “bullying”
with a “faulty” ticket machine in Leicestershire.
‘Potentially discriminatory’
Last year, it fined a good Samaritan £155 after he stopped to
help a pensioner who had fallen and broken her hip.
Mr Falkenau added: “We have gone through the [parking] process
as described – my wife has Parkinson’s, she is partially sighted
– and we’ve been penalised both times. The result is, from my
point of view, that there’s a concern that we can’t access the
disabled parking.”
Mr Falkenau, from Forest Hall, near Newcastle upon Tyne, said
The Glasshouse has a number of parking spaces where blue badge
holders can park for free.
The process for using the free spaces, however, was potentially
discriminatory against the disabled, he added.
“Logically it requires a disabled person to be ambulant and have
to walk a greater distance than an able-bodied person to fulfil
the parking regulations; first, having to walk to a pay station
with the blue badge, then return it to the car and then walk a
third third time to the lift to gain access to Glasshouse,” he
told the Newcastle Chronicle.
A ‘technical issue’ uncovered
Parking penalties at The Glasshouse are £100 each, reduced to
£60 if paid within 14 days, its website says.
A spokesman for The Glasshouse claimed that Euro Car Parks,
which operates the car park for the venue, had uncovered a
“technical issue” after Mr Falkenau questioned his repeated
penalties.
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“Firstly, we’re very sorry to hear that [the Falkenaus’] recent
experience of parking at The Glasshouse has caused them stress
and frustration. We completely understand how important
accessibility is, particularly for those with mobility
challenges,” said the spokesman.
“While The Glasshouse does not operate the car park directly, we
take feedback from our visitors seriously. We’ve been in touch
with Euro Car Parks (ECP), who manage the site, and they’ve
confirmed that their system follows DVLA guidance for Blue Badge
use.”
“However, we’ve been advised by ECP today that they’ve
identified a technical issue affecting Blue Badge users when
paying on entry. We understand that they are currently working
on a fix, which they hope to implement shortly.”
Euro Car Parks was contacted for comment.
‘A big source of frustration’
Last year, the company demanded that Alistair Kelly pay £155
after he waited for two hours for an ambulance to arrive after a
woman in her nineties fell and broke her hip.
Mr Kelly, who was on his lunch break in Cowes, Isle of Wight,
when the incident happened last summer, said in November: “It’s
a big source of frustration when you are being fined for doing a
good deed. I just don’t understand how I can be fined for this.”
Although the former Conservative government tried to introduce a
legally binding code of practice on private parking in 2022, it
was withdrawn after a few months in the face of legal threats by
the parking industry.
Drivers will now no longer be issued tickets for using
privately-owned car parks where a fixed camera monitors the
entrance and exits, as long as they pay before they leave.
Two trade associations, the International Parking Association
and the British Parking Association, have set up a
self-regulation scheme.
Earlier this year it abolished the “five minute rule” for car
parking, following the case of a woman who was threatened with
£1,900 in parking charges after she repeatedly took more than
five minutes to pay because of a poor phone signal.
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