LONDON  -  A woman is being taken to court for £1,906 after she took longer than five minutes to pay for parking. Rosey Hudson said she was unable to pay while standing in the car park in Derby due to poor signal on her phone. She walked to where she could get connected and paid the full tariff every time she parked there - but despite this, Excel Parking Ltd sent her 10 Parking Charge Notices (PCNs). The BBC contacted the car park operator, which said Miss Hudson had breached its terms and conditions and was “the author of her own misfortune”. Two MPs - Lola McEvoy and Abtisam Mohamed - have previously written to Excel Parking with concerns about people being unfairly fined at other car parks it operates. Miss Hudson believes the five-minute payment rule is “totally unreasonable”.”I haven’t got children but I can imagine a busy mum trying to sort her kids out, trying to pay for something when there’s no signal here, and the machine being out of order,” she said. “This has been going on for over a year now, and I’m just really hoping it can be resolved. “I desperately don’t want this to happen to anybody else, more than anything, because it gives you a lot of stress.” Miss Hudson started using the Copeland Street car park in February 2023, when she was working in the Derbion centre nearby.

She said the parking machine was “completely out of order”, so she tried to pay using a phone app. “I was trying to get reception and wasn’t able to, so I got my wi-fi within the store, and paid online through their app,” she said. Miss Hudson did the same thing each day, paying the full £3.30 daily rate each time, until she received a PCN letter. It asked her to pay £100 within 28 days, reduced to £60 if she paid within 14 days. “I rang the company and explained the situation, and they basically said ‘you have to pay it’,” said Miss Hudson. “So to keep them off my back I did pay the initial parking fine.”  Miss Hudson then received a further nine PCNs. Although each of the nine outstanding PCNs was for £100, the amount has increased to £1,905.76 because Excel Parking has since added an extra £70 “debt recovery” charge to each one, interest of 8% per annum, a £115 court fee, and £80 costs for a legal representative.