Council Parking Confusion

So my residents parking permit is up for renewal and the council send me a letter informing me of this along with a form to renew it and a summary of the various options for payment. I fill out the form, enclose a cheque and trudge out through the snow one evening to put it in the post.

Given the simplicity of the process and the fact I had followed the instructions enclosed with the renewal notice to the letter, I was surprised to get a phone call today citing a problem. I was even more surprised to discover what the problem was.

It would appear that the occupant of the basement flat below my house has also recently decided to avail of a parking permit, except instead of giving his address as the flat he gave it as the house. For reasons unknown to me they allowed him to do this even though I already had a permit.

The result of this confusion was that I was called to say that I couldn’t renew my permit because there was already one issued for the house; I would have to pay twice as much for a second permit as I was a second occupier requiring a second permit.

I replied that I’d love to know who else was secretly living in my house and buying parking permits for it as I certainly hadn’t seen anyone. I demanded that they process my renewal and do so promptly as they had only condescended to send me the renewal forms two weeks before the expiry of the old permit. They said they would “Look into it” and before I had a chance to say anything else they hung up. I would have phoned them back but they had withheld their number.

All I can say is that I shan’t be paying any more than what I already have and that if they screw this up and I end up getting parking fines because of their failure to renew promptly and correctly I shan’t even be writing them a letter, I will be passing the issue straight to the small claims court. What with the lack of rubbish collections and running out of grit for the roads, I’m pretty damn sick of Swindon Borough Council at the moment.

 

Possibly related articles

1 Comment

  1. Buntu Said,

    March 18, 2009 @ 6:25 am

    I just wana say I admire you work and I get inspired by it

RSS feed for comments on this post