Mum ‘let down’ by Hemel's Everyone Active following parking fine

A mum says she feels let down by Everyone Active – who runs Hemel Hempstead Leisure Centre – after receiving a £100 parking fine, despite saying she followed procedures that entitled her to free parking.

Michelle Goldthorp from Hemel Hempstead had dropped her daughter to a gymnastics class in early October and says she entered her registration number into the parking machine in the car park on Park Road.

Everyone Active allows leisure centre users to park for free for up to three hours – provided they give details of their registration plate.

Michelle said: "The problem is they didn't put any receipts in their machine so you can't prove you registered your car reg. I appealed in the two-week window they gave me and the parking company denied my appeal so I still have to pay the fine.

"I’m now left with a hundred pound fine to pay when I don't work as I am my son’s full-time carer.”

Everyone Active general manager David Tenny said: “We understand that our members use our centre for long periods of time, which is why we offer free three-hour parking to all of our users at the centre. Members need to enter their registration plate upon entry to be entitled to free parking. This is advertised upon entry of the car park and there is signage throughout our car parks on how the system operates.”

He added that as the car park was managed by a third party company, Everyone Active was unable to overturn any fines – but had informed Creative Carpark Ltd, which runs the metres, that tickets were not being printed.

Creative Carpark Ltd which runs the leisure centre parking meters and carpark said: “We cannot comment on individual cases without the express permission of the recipient of the Parking Charge Notice (PCN).

“We have also not been provided with any details of the complainant, so are unable to comment on the specific details of this PCN in anything other than general terms.

“However, we can see from the data for this site for the 7 October 2022 that 591 vehicles registered for a permit on the exemption system and that the system was working properly throughout the whole day, as VRMs were being consistently registered.

“The complainant will have been given the option to appeal to the independent appeals service on receipt of the appeal notification letter. The complainant may have registered the wrong vehicle registration mark when registering and if we are provided with the details of the PCN, we can investigate this and reconsider the appeal in light of that information.”