A DISABLED driver has criticised a shopping centre's parking company for its poor signage after being hit with a parking charge.

James Cox, who lives in Evesham, says that he and many others have been hit by fines at the Riverside Shopping Centre since it decided to start charging disabled drivers.

Mr Cox added he does not object to the charge, but believes that the car park is poorly signposted.

He said: "I along with many other local disabled drivers have been fined by Euro car parks when they had no signage clearly displaying that they had changed after decades to charge for parking.

"I after my first appeal has been turned down because I thought the system had made an error, made enquiries of how they have sneaked in this charge without suitable signage to advise and the lady in the mobility shop showed me a pile of fines good local people who support our town are being chased for payment.

"If signage was clear we all would have paid, but under these circumstances all of us are being ripped off with threats of court action.

"I have given photographic evidence that where I parked on both occasions for durations of less than 20 minutes has no sign on wall or where I walked out of car park to visit Sports Direct and Cex game shop with my teenage son, to offer any clue that you had introduced a change to parking in this car park.

"Having used this car park since I was given a disabled badge in 2009, why would I believe I had to pay in 2017?

"We now need common sense to prevail, not only for me, but all the other parking fines for same issue being revoked, a clear and substantial signage in the correct positions for everyone to see before leaving car park, so anyone in the future has no excuses where all of us clearly do have legitimate claim that your no acknowledgement current approach is totally unfair.

"The sign they have is so small, and it is not near the disabled parking area."

Sam Lawrence at GVA, which manage the Riverside car park on behalf of Euro Car Parks said: “A new car park usage agreement was put in place in April this year, offering three hours’ free parking for disabled badge holders using the Shopmobility service.

“The site is monitored by an Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system which reads a vehicle’s registration details and matches them with the number entered by motorists at a ticket machine.

“To ensure that disabled badge holders are able to take advantage of this free parking period, as per signage displayed around the car park, they are asked to enter their details in a dedicated console in the Shopmobility unit.

"This will register their vehicle details with the ANPR system and ensure that they are not charged.

“Penalty charge notifications are issued automatically if no matching details are found on the system and having discussed this issue with Euro Car Parks, all currently issued penalty charge notifications issued to disabled badge holders to date will be cancelled.

“We have tested the system today and can confirm that it’s working and strongly advise all users to be sure to enter the correct information in the console to ensure that they don’t receive a penalty charge notice.”

“We will review the signage provision on site and general awareness of these measures to ensure that advice to disabled badge holders is displayed clearly going forward.”