MOURNERS GIVEN PARKING FINES
Dearne Today
by Lee Peace
A GRIEVING family returned from paying their last respects at a relative's funeral to find a council warden had slapped parking fines on their cars.
Relations had parked outside the former home of Margaret Scothorne in Swinton before walking behind the hearse to St Margaret's Parish Church.
After a moving funeral service, family members and friends returned to her house on Temperance Street to travel to the wake in Mexborough - only to discover a warden had placed £60 parking tickets on their car windscreens.
The mourners admit unwittingly parking on a single yellow line, but claim that the restrictions were poorly signposted and say they were upset by the timing of the fines, just a week after Mrs Scothorne passed away.
Mrs Scothorne's brother-in-law David Gardner, 66, said: "We found this quite upsetting. We had already gone through a lot with her death and to find our cars had been ticketed was quite disheartening especially when we had just been to her funeral.
"We did not see the yellow line on the road and only realised when we received the parking tickets. I cannot shout 'jobsworth' at the council official because they were only doing their job.
"But there weren't any signposts saying you couldn't park there. You don't really think about these things when you are dealing with a funeral."
He said that, had the road been better signposted, they would have noticed and parked elsewhere.
David, of St John's Walk, Royston, added: "There were about five or six of us who were fined. I have paid the money but I am going to put an appeal in to make the point because it was upsetting for the people who were there, I mean dealing with a funeral is hard enough."
A spokesman for Rotherham Council said that there is a sign post on the road which states it is a no parking zone between 9am and 6pm Monday to Saturday, and added: "We do understand that this is a sensitive issue because this was a funeral, and we do make allowances for a hearse and the funeral cortege on the road - but unfortunately we cannot do this for all of the mourners' vehicles.
"There were also other roads within the area that could have been used to park on."
lee.peace@dearnetoday.co.uk
09 November 2006
by Lee Peace
A GRIEVING family returned from paying their last respects at a relative's funeral to find a council warden had slapped parking fines on their cars.
Relations had parked outside the former home of Margaret Scothorne in Swinton before walking behind the hearse to St Margaret's Parish Church.
After a moving funeral service, family members and friends returned to her house on Temperance Street to travel to the wake in Mexborough - only to discover a warden had placed £60 parking tickets on their car windscreens.
The mourners admit unwittingly parking on a single yellow line, but claim that the restrictions were poorly signposted and say they were upset by the timing of the fines, just a week after Mrs Scothorne passed away.
Mrs Scothorne's brother-in-law David Gardner, 66, said: "We found this quite upsetting. We had already gone through a lot with her death and to find our cars had been ticketed was quite disheartening especially when we had just been to her funeral.
"We did not see the yellow line on the road and only realised when we received the parking tickets. I cannot shout 'jobsworth' at the council official because they were only doing their job.
"But there weren't any signposts saying you couldn't park there. You don't really think about these things when you are dealing with a funeral."
He said that, had the road been better signposted, they would have noticed and parked elsewhere.
David, of St John's Walk, Royston, added: "There were about five or six of us who were fined. I have paid the money but I am going to put an appeal in to make the point because it was upsetting for the people who were there, I mean dealing with a funeral is hard enough."
A spokesman for Rotherham Council said that there is a sign post on the road which states it is a no parking zone between 9am and 6pm Monday to Saturday, and added: "We do understand that this is a sensitive issue because this was a funeral, and we do make allowances for a hearse and the funeral cortege on the road - but unfortunately we cannot do this for all of the mourners' vehicles.
"There were also other roads within the area that could have been used to park on."
lee.peace@dearnetoday.co.uk
09 November 2006
posted by Neil Herron at 10:04 AM
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