Lyme Regis council collected thousands on free parking days

A town council collected thousands of pounds in parking charges and fines on days when its car park should have been free.

Certain car parks in Lyme Regis, Dorset, including one owned by Lyme Regis Town Council, are free to use on selected days a year, such as the Christmas lights switch-on and Remembrance Sunday.

After receiving complaints from customers, traders discovered the offer had not been implemented at the town council’s Woodmead car park and, over the last two years, it had wrongly collected more than £10,000 from drivers.

Lyme Regis Town Council apologised and said “more robust procedures” would be in place in future.

When complaints first emerged following the town’s Blessing of the Boats free parking day on 10 May, the town council blamed an “administrative oversight”.

But members of Cobb Traders business group, who promoted the offer to their customers, submitted a Freedom of Information request and discovered it was not an isolated incident.

Data from the town council showed it collected parking fees on all 12 of its free parking days between October 2024 and May 2026, totalling more than £10,000.

The data did not include any payment machine takings for five of the 12 free days because the machines had since been replaced.