A warden booked a disabled man for parking illegally despite having a permit on his car.

Jonathan Hastie, 22, who uses an electric wheelchair, was on a shopping trip in Brighton with his parents to buy a Mothering Sunday gift and 50th birthday present for his mum Jenny.

The family parked in a disabled space and had an orange permit in the windscreen of their car but a traffic warden issued a ticket for allegedly not displaying the badge.

Mr Hastie, who is studying an MA in environmental studies at Essex University, had returned to his home in Furze Road, Worthing, for the Easter break. He was incensed to be given a ticket.

He said: "I was really angry. It put a downer on the rest of the day.

"The warden saw the badge was the right one but he didn't say how we could do anything about the ticket or help us to rectify it.

"He was polite but just unhelpful. The ticket had been issued and as far as he was concerned that was it even though he admitted he was at fault."

Mr Hastie said the warden told the family there were a lot of forged and out-of-date orange badges in Brighton and Hove.

The orange permits are being phased out and replaced with blue ones but the one Mr Hastie and his family were using did not run out until March 31 - two days after the incident.

Mr Hastie's father Ian has written to Brighton and Hove City Council demanding the ticket is cancelled.

He said: "We were disgusted with the way we were treated.

"It was obvious from the conversation that he assumed because we were displaying an orange badge that it wasn't valid.

"The attendant refused to provide me with his name, or the name of his supervisor, or anyone else who we could appeal to in order to have the ticket cancelled.

"He displayed the type of officious jobsworth attitude that gives parking attendants their bad name."

A council spokesman said if the family appealed, it was likely they would get their money back and the ticket would be cancelled.