LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Remove ‘cowboys’ from Rotherham's NHS surgery car parks

I have had to put up with three years of harassment from one of these ruthless organisations after parking at my NHS doctors’ surgery.

I had an appointment at 7.30am and on seeing the doctor he asked me to return after an hour to see the nurse. I was unaware that parking restrictions at the surgery had come into force (there had been none before, nobody had told me and I hadn’t seen the signs) and that if you left the car park and came back within two hours you had to get “electronic exemption” from the surgery staff. I popped out briefly from an almost empty car park to get a newspaper to have something to read while I waited and that was the reason for a parking notice of £100!

I asked the company to rescind the “fine”, explaining what had happened and why they were being unreasonable, and I refused to pay it. Even my doctor asked them to drop the request for money but they refused to budge and got debt collectors involved, the amount demanded rising to £250.

Knowing that private companies have no legal clout and can only get money from you by taking you to court, I decided to risk it as a matter of principle as I had done nothing wrong. After three years of this attempted extortion, and letters and phone calls from a debt company, the case went to court and I won.

The relief of winning and delight of knowing these greedy money-grabbers with their gangster capitalist tactics will have had to pay the court fees only partially compensates for the stress they caused me.

Now the amount they can request from you is to be a maximum of £50.

Staff at the surgery told me a lot of patients, like myself, had been unwittingly caught out with “fines” by the parking company.

Such cowboys should be removed from NHS premises. A car park attendant to ensure people don’t park if not seeing NHS staff would be much better.

Andy Gray, Carlton Avenue, Rotherham