A STUNNED Alton worker has hit out at East Hampshire District Council after a fine was slapped on her car in a town centre car park. Mother-of-two Celia Pearce, was furious when she found the £30 fine on the windscreen of her Peugeot 106. Her anger grew when she read the reason for the fine - "sale of goods not allowed in EHDC car parks". Mrs Pearce, of Kingsley, said: "I am trying to sell my car privately, prior to buying a new one, and so like a lot of people do these days, I put a notice in my windscreen saying 'for sale' and giving my home phone number. "I understand the need to stop traders from using car parks to sell burgers or ice-cream and I accept that unscrupulous dealers who sell cars from home might take advantage by displaying vehicles in a town centre car park. "But I work in an office and have parked my car in the same space in the Turk Street car park every day for the past seven years. The second day it was parked there with a 'for sale' sign in the windscreen, I was fined £30. "This is bureaucracy gone mad. Why can't the car park attendant use his discretion and realise that I am not a trader and I'm not making a living out of selling cars in my spare time? Perhaps you could call it advertising, but are EHDC trying to dictate what people display in their windscreens? "If this is classed as selling, isn't every motorist breaking the law by displaying the name of the dealer who sold the car to them? Or every van that displays the name of a company on the side? "Isn't a double-glazing contractor parked in a car park breaking the same law by inviting people to phone the telephone number on the side of his van for a quote?" Mrs Pearce was angry she was given no warning that she was committing an offence and feared many other motorists could fall foul of this or other obscure by-laws. East Hampshire District Council has now agreed to waive the "embarrassing" ticket - after the fiasco appeared in national tabloid newspapers, such as The Sun. Mrs Pearce said she was pleased the council had seen sense. "I still think it was silly, the car park attendant should have used his common sense in the first place. but they have done the sensible thing now and I am quite happy about that," she said. "I have made my point and I have got what I wanted. I didn't want to have to pay the fine." Referring to the national coverage given to the parking fine, Mrs Pearce said: "They (the district council) have been made to look silly." She added: "They have written to me in what is a pretty standardised letter saying that they have agreed that their car park attendant followed the letter of the law but it was not in the right spirit, and I would agree with that." Mrs Pearce has since taken the "for sale" notice out of her car and on Wednesday she traded it in for a Peugeot 206. A spokesman for the district council said its ban on selling goods in car parks was designed to deter commercial traders. It admitted the ticket was "embarrassing" and said it would waive the fine.
