Driver Receives Six Parking Charges After ANPR Mix-Up

ANPR Error Leads to Six Parking Charges for Cambridgeshire Driver

ANPR Parking Mix-Up Leaves Driver Facing Six Parking Charges A driver in Cambridgeshire received six parking charges after an Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera apparently mistook a letter on his registration plate for a different letter. Stephen Cheeseman, from Stilton, said the charges were issued for the car park at the Dragonfly Hotel in Peterborough over a six-month period. The 71-year-old said he panicked when the first £100 parking charge arrived in February, believing he may have been responsible for a parking violation. However, photographs supplied with the charge appeared to show a different make of car entering the car park. ANPR Camera Confused the Number Plate According to Cheeseman, the problem centred on the letter K on his registration being incorrectly read as an X by the parking enforcement system. ANPR cameras are designed to record vehicle registration numbers and can be used to monitor when vehicles enter and leave a car park. In this case, the system repeatedly linked another vehicle to Cheeseman's registration, resulting in further parking charges being sent to him. Cheeseman said he contacted the Dragonfly Hotel, where staff were “very helpful”, before returning the documents to the parking company. He said he initially heard nothing further, but the same issue continued and eventually resulted in six separate parking charges. The repeated notices left Cheeseman concerned that his registration plate might have been cloned, particularly because he had not been using the hotel car park. He said the last time he had been near the Dragonfly Hotel was when visiting a rowing club around six years earlier. The situation also produced a particularly confusing moment when two envelopes arrived with his latest parking notice. One letter said a parking ticket had been cancelled and suggested there had been a duplication, while the second envelope contained another parking charge. Parking Enforcement Error Raises ANPR Questions Cheeseman said the parking company has since apologised and promised that the problem “won't happen again”. The incident highlights how important accurate number plate recognition is when ANPR technology is used for parking enforcement. For drivers who receive a parking charge for a car park they did not use, checking the vehicle photographs and registration details can be important before assuming the charge is correct. In Cheeseman's case, the photographs provided by the parking company helped show that the vehicle entering the site was not his car. The BBC has approached Civil Enforcement Ltd for comment about the incident.