London Motorists Action Group - They painted bus stop round my car... then gave me a ticket!

A DRIVER is fuming after finding a bus stop had been painted around his broken-down car - and then he had been given a parking ticket.

Neil Rutter, 35, had parked his Lexus close to his mother's house on North Hill, Highgate, after the battery went dead and the power steering failed.

He left it there, parked legally, with a note saying "Broken down" on the dashboard until he could arrange to repair it.

But two days later, workmen turned up unannounced, painted most of a yellow bus stop marking around his car - and within hours, a parking ticket had been slapped on his windscreen.

Mr Rutter, who is on sickness benefit, said: "I looked out across the road and I thought someone had stuck a note on my car. When I realised it was a ticket I was not impressed.

"The parking warden didn't go through that much grief to put it on the car, so why should I have to go through all this grief to contest it?

"They are pretty sly around here, but they are wasting taxpayers' money. Anyone with a bit of sense would have seen that it's broken down."

Atif Waheed, owner of A S Food & Wine, close to the bus stop at the junction with North Hill Avenue, said: "It's madness. The lines were only painted in the morning. They should give a notice at least that they are painting at this time on this day.

"They were cutting trees last week and they managed to put a notice up.

"If people have been parking here for the last four or five years, how are they supposed to know there are going to be painted lines one morning?"

A Haringey Council spokeswoman said: "We would ask Mr Rutter to submit an appeal in writing, in the usual manner, so that we can properly investigate this case.

"If we find that a parking ticket should not have been issued in this instance, then we will of course be happy to drop the fine. We apologise that in this instance local residents did not receive prior notice of the introduction of the painted box. We are now sending out a letter explaining the reason for the change.

Muswell Hill Journal


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