Karen Axton is right to write that common sense has to prevail when issuing parking tickets (Letters, July 11). If only it did and if only discretion was used.

Recently our car was clamped within the grounds of Coombe Lea in Grand Avenue. My wife was escorting her 90-year-old father-in-law, who had a major heart operation this year, and his partner, who also has severe mobility problems, to their flat. The car had to be temporarily parked near the entrance.

Since we are not disabled, we do not have a “valid blue badge at the time of enforcement” and, despite representations to the private security company to repay the £130 for releasing the car clamp, they have been inflexible.

They have justified their position by endeavouring to stick to the letter of their contract. They have showed no desire to receive more information or use discretion or common sense and now suggest that all representations to them have been exhausted.

It is a mean-minded world where you are fined for escorting disabled people to their flat, while parked within their own grounds.

This is surely not what was intended either by the law regulating private parking or by the management committee of the flats.

Is this the meaning of the big society and the cost of being a good Samaritan?

As a society we need to protect the rights of the disabled, not fine those helping them.

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