A HASLEMERE resident is up in arms over signs restricting parking, which have recently appeared in Tesco's car park in Wey Hill.

Alan Verran, from Pine View Close, saw red when blue and yellow signs went up announcing that anybody flouting the new rules could be subject to a £50 fine.

"It seems that Tesco has handed over the management of its car parks to an organisation called Euro Car Parks," said an aggrieved Mr Verrun.

Believing that before Tesco was built, conditions were laid down to safeguard the use of the car park for residents shopping in Wey Hill or visiting the library, Mr Verran has written to the chief executive of Waverley Borough Council, Christine Pointer.

The signs say that the car park is restricted to use by Tesco customers only and for a period of one-and-a-half hours only, with no return within five hours.

On Monday morning, the new system was already up and running with a representative from the company busily tapping in car registration numbers on a hand-held gadget.

A spokesman for Waverley Borough Council said: "Tesco has always had the right to control the use of its car park and the only constraint imposed at the time was the right of way for the access road to the locality office."

But Mr Verran told The Herald: "I don't think the residents of Haslemere understood it in quite those terms. Where are people to park now? There are a few spaces down Wey Hill and a highly limited number of spaces at the former Wey Centre, which we could lose if a new library is built there."

Mr Verran, a regular Tesco shopper, added: "If this is what the officers and councillors of Waverley accepted, they were grossly negligent.

"I have never found any difficulty in parking in Tesco, there are always plenty of unused places except on a Friday or Saturday morning and then there is a continuous flow of traffic coming in and out."

The personnel manager for Tesco at Wey Hill admitted there had been "some customer feedback" about the matter and they had decided to increase the time limit to two hours.

The majority of customers, she said, were quite happy about the new arrangements, she said. "We appreciate feedback from customers and at the end of the day we are trying to make their lives easier."