Fined £110 a day - for parking on their own drive

Residents in a quiet Surbiton street have been slapped with £110 parking tickets - for parking on their own drives.

The houses in Cadogan Road, Surbiton, back on to St Leonard's Road, where they have garages and short driveways where the owners park. However, for the last few days, cars parked here have been receiving tickets, with fines of £110.

"It is bemusing. After the first one I thought it was obviously some kind of mistake and would be easily sorted out. Then the fines just kept on coming," resident David Gilbert, 40, tells the Kingston Guardian, after having had his black Audi ticketed three times.

"When you try and talk to someone at the council they tell you to talk to parking services, but they just tell you that you have been photographed parking illegally and you will have to contest it like everyone else does."

At first, Kingston Council defended its actions, saying the residents didn't actually own the concrete 'crossover' to their drives - which it even described as 'important green spaces'.

It then said it would cancel the tickets, but that it had had complaints from residents of St Leonard's Road, and insisted that the cars were parked on the highway, rather than driveways.

In other parts of the street, yellow lines have been painted to stop people parking over driveways and in front of garages.

The case is very similar to that of Carly Mackie, a 26-year-old from Dundee, who clocked up an eye-watering £18,500 in fines for parking in front of her own garage.

She was using a cobbled area that had parking restrictions, and the council said she should have had a permit.

Similarly, James and Lauren Callan, from Adlington in Lancashire, were told earlier this year that they could be fined £1,000 for parking on what was definitely their own driveway.

The reason was that the council had painted double yellow lines on the road outside their house, which it was an offence to cross. When the Callans objected, they were initially told that because their drive didn't have a dropped kerb, they couldn't use it; the council later relented.

And it's worth remembering that a quarter of all parking fines that are appealed are successfully overturned. Car buying experts Zuto have a guide on how to challenge a fine, here.