I was fined £100 for charging my car at a motorway service station

The time limit for free parking is two hours but I had to wait 30 minutes just to get the use of a charging point

I stopped at Abington services on the M74 to charge my electric car. I had to wait over half an hour for a connector to become free, then spent an hour and a half charging. Ten days later, I received a £100 penalty charge for exceeding the two-hour free parking period. Like most people, I’ve never spent more than two hours in a motorway service station and it didn’t cross my mind to buy a ticket. Others should be warned that when charging, it’s easy to run over the limit.
DW, Cupar, Fife

The mandatory free parking period, which applies to service stations across the UK, belongs to a different era when two hours was ample to use the lav and buy a meal. The rationale was that without a parking limit, the public would embrace service stations as a destination for a delightful day out, rather than as a pit stop.

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