Newark KFC customer handed £60 restricted period parking fine despite open restaurant

A visit to KFC proved costly after one man was fined £60 for parking there, despite the restaurant being open.

Musician Jon Priestly was travelling home to Birmingham from a gig in Louth when he stopped at KFC on Lincoln Road, Newark, at 1am.

He bought some chips and a drink at the drive thru, spending ten minutes on the restaurant’s property, and was surprised when, a few days later, a £60 fine from carpark monitoring company UKPC arrived in the post.

Jon said: “I was there for ten minutes, and I was fined for parking after hours.

“I tried to contest it. I sent proof of the drive thru transaction on my bank account, but I was essentially told it was a waste of time.”

UKPC denied his appeal, and said the parking charge had been correctly issued and the period was a no parking period ­— despite the restaurant remaining open until 2am.

Jon saw online that other people had been fined by UKPC for similar reasons at the location and contacted the manager of the restaurant.

“She said she would email UKPC, but that it was not KFC’s carpark,” Jon said.

The Advertiser previously helped a Newark woman win a £160 parking fine case at the restaurant, after mix-up on her way to a festival.

UKPC had claimed that she had parked in the restaurant carpark during the restricted no parking period, and passed on her details to a debt collection company that threatened to take her to court.

Her parking fine was cancelled after Advertiser intervention, and KFC plan to do the same for Jon.

A KFC spokesman said: “To help keep things running smoothly, we do have some parking limits in place, but Jon’s experience clearly wasn’t great.

“We have contacted our partners who operate the car park to make things right and cancel the fine.”