Croydon’s mayor has said he will not apologise after a resident received multiple parking fines when a disabled bay was painted around his legally parked car. The incident has prompted criticism from opposition councillors and renewed debate over parking enforcement in the borough, forming the centre of the Croydon parking bay dispute.
Footage shared on social media showed a contractor measuring and painting a disabled parking bay around a black car parked on an unrestricted road outside its owner’s home in New Addington, south London. The owner had left the vehicle there while he was on holiday.
The resident, who did not wish to be named, said Croydon mayor Jason Perry’s response to the incident “was disgraceful”. Croydon Council has previously said it “apologised for the confusion” and confirmed that “the tickets were cancelled a week before the video was uploaded to social media”.
Four penalty charge notices were issued between 22 and 26 November, after the bay was installed on 17 November. The matter was raised at a full council meeting on 10 December by New Addington North Labour councillor Kola Agboola, who called for a public apology and an explanation.
Mayor Perry acknowledged that a mistake had been made but said painting bays around parked cars was “fairly common practice”. He also said the fines were not enforced because the tickets “were not followed through”.
The car owner told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he only shared the footage online because of previous issues with the council over parking in his area. The Croydon parking bay dispute, he said, reflected wider concerns.
Councillor Agboola said the incident had triggered “a wave of online abuse” directed at himself, local residents and the parking warden involved. He asked whether similar cases had affected “innocent motorists across Croydon” and whether the resident would have been fined if the footage had not been shared.
Responding to those questions, the mayor said: “I guess the answer is no, no and no.”
“There is no need to issue an apology because it was dealt with. This is fairly routine,” he added. He said disabled bays were often painted around vehicles when installation was required.
“If we are painting disabled bays in this borough and there is a car in the way, and it may be there for two weeks because someone has gone on holiday, then the bay will be done around the vehicle,” he said.
Mayor Perry explained that contractors normally record vehicle registration numbers during such work, which should prevent enforcement action. He said that on this occasion the parking warden made a mistake by not noting the exemption.
He also questioned why the footage had been posted online. “The whole thing was actioned before someone chose to put those images on social media, so I think we need to look at perhaps why those images were put on social media in the first place,” he said.
The car owner rejected that suggestion. “If you want us to be polite and do the right thing, then an apology is the right thing to do because they made a mistake,” he said, adding that the footage was shared because of ongoing problems with parking enforcement in the area. The Croydon parking bay dispute, he said, had not been resolved by the council’s response.
