Colchester Utd fans have to break padlocks to retrieve their cars

“The whole car park had been closed with the gates locked, bolted up with two padlocks, and no-one could get out,” said supporter Colin Clarke.

“I tried to contact Essex Park and Ride but, of course, that went to voicemail and said ‘We’ll deal with your query in the morning’.

“I also tried to phone 101, but they weren’t accepting calls because of the number of calls that they had. I finally got through to the police on 999, and they said it wasn’t a police matter.”

Mr Clarke said after that after about an hour of waiting, “some people took things into their own hands, opened the gates up and everyone left”.

“We were only there for about an hour, but it could have been a lot longer and a lot worse.”

A spokesperson for Essex County Council said: “The Colchester park-and-ride site was due to remain open until 22.30. However, there appears to have been a breakdown in communication.”

Mike Lilley, Labour councillor for Colchester, said: “Someone took it upon themselves, at 21:30, to just padlock the car park and just go home.

“There were nearly 200 cars in the carpark. It is incredibly poor management. It’s not good enough.

“It is going to put people off and Colchester can’t afford to lose any fans. We need this to be done right.”

The council spokesperson said: “We will be refunding all customers who purchased their ticket using MiPermit.”