A private parking company has issued fresh fines to motorists who attended a Remembrance Day service in Dundee last year despite previously telling them to tear their tickets up.
More than a dozen people were hit with parking fines while they attended the annual Remembrance Day service on board the Unicorn in November.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing wardens swoop on vehicles parked in the private car park at South Victoria Dock Road shortly after the Royal Naval Reserve’s annual service had begun.
Organisers of the event had forgotten to seek permission to use the car park during the event but Tim Allan, director of car park owners the Unicorn Property Group, said anyone who had been given a ticket should tear it up.
Just weeks later Vehicle Control Services (VCS), which operate the car park on behalf of Unicorn, has issued fresh demands to at least two people who used it that day.
Instead of the original £60 fine, they are demanding £100 and telling motorists they have forfeited their right to appeal.
Petty Officer Simon Johnson from Scone said: “They are now demanding £100 but I’m not going to pay this one either.
“When the guy said to tear the ticket up that is exactly what I did.”
Former Dundee Lord Provost Mervyn Rolfe has also received a fresh demand from VCS.
He said: “I’d understood the tickets were to be ripped up so to receive a demand for £100 was quite a shock.
“I can take such a demand on the chin but some of the people who were at the service were quite a bit older and I imagined that for them this would be quite distressing.”
Mr Rolfe said he has contacted VCS.
“The letter says that I have lost my right to appeal, though it adds that I may still do so within 14 days if there are ‘exceptional circumstances’.
“I have been in touch with the company to challenge the ticket and VCS has promised to look into the matter.”
However, not everyone who was originally given a parking ticket has been hit with a second demand.
Meg Woomble and her husband Ron were among the first to discover they had been ticketed following the Remembrance Day service.
But Meg said they had not received any more communication from VCS since then.
“We haven’t received a second demand. They got our registration wrong on the first one so I guess we are doubly safe.”
Neither Mr Allan nor VCS responded to requests for comment.