USING Beaconsfield or Stanford medical practices in Preston Road, Brighton, can be bad for your financial health.

The introduction of a car parking monitoring system managed by a firm called Parking Eye is meant to deter anti-social drivers who hope to use it as a free facility close to London Road shops. That’s fair enough, but it also catches distracted visitors in its draconian net.

I have been car-free for a number of years now and can easily walk to the medical centre. Not so a friend of mine who gave a relative a lift to the surgery. She didn’t go into the surgery herself and did not complete the form to avoid the fine that swiftly followed.

It is experiences such as these which have fuelled the controversy over the private parking enforcement industry which has powers to hand out tickets in the same way as local authorities.

The surgery receives no revenue from the parking.It seems like a nice earner for Parking Eye - but more problematic is the fact that no planning permission is necessary for such a scheme.

I'm told Parking Eye contacted the local council and discussed the issue of planning but they did not have to apply.

The council website has no record of a planning application for the system.

All the council will say is: “Any planning pre-application advice given would normally be confidential until a planning application was submitted.”

It seems odd, to say the least, that the landowner at the site should not need planning permission to install a licence number plate recognition system and cameras.

As the car park managers might say - watch this space.

John Keenan is a journalist