A KEIGHLEY councillor successfully challenged his fine after being penalised when he used a town centre car park.

But Councillor Michael Westerman, who is chairman of Keighley Town Council’s Watch and Transport Committee, said other people who have been fined after using this same car park may have similar, valid grounds to overturn their penalties.

A spokesman for Morrisons Supermarket, which owns the Morrisons Keighley Market car park off Church Way, this week responded: “If anybody thinks they have been incorrectly charged, they should contact our customer services team, who will be happy to look into the case.”

Cllr Westerman, who is also chairman of the non-council Keighley Public Transport Watch group, said he parked in the car park at 12.20pm on June 21 in order to attend a meeting with Keighley’s MP.

He said he left at 3.24pm that day.

A few days later he received an £85 parking charge notice, on the grounds that he had not paid and displayed.

But Cllr Westerman said it had been impossible for him to do so, because the payment machines in the car park had been taped up and were out of action that day.

“They’d been taped up for some time before that as well, even though the signage still said it was pay and display,” he added. “The signage was wrong, so they’d broken the rules, not me. They couldn’t legally fine me for parking there if the machines weren’t working.”

Cllr Westerman took photos of the car park’s pay and display signs, which he passed to the Keighley News.

He said after he contacted Morrisons to complain, the business did withdraw the penalty notice against him last Wednesday. (July 4)

He said the supermarket had told him it would be prepared to investigate and cancel other such fines against car park users where appropriate.

An e-mail sent to him from Morrisons said it was happy to cancel the fine made against him, but noted the supermarket did need controls to prevent abuse of its car parking provision.

Cllr Westerman said the pay and display machines remain in place, and are still out of action.

He said he is now questioning whether new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation means the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency should still be allowed to sell vehicle owner information to car park enforcement firms.

He said he believes the recent introduction of GDPR laws were meant to have made this illegal.

“That’s what GDPR is there for, to protect your private data,” he said. “Nobody should be above the law.”