Zoe Bread forces Manchester City Council to refund parking fines

A woman has won a long-running battle over a parking fine by donning a mask like a slice of bread and making a raft of social media videos about it.

The campaign started when she received a penalty for parking on Collier Street in Manchester after confusing signs meant she bought a ticket from the wrong machine.

After a lengthy row which saw her assume the alter-ego Zoe Bread, pen a song about her quest and make 29 Instagram and TikTok videos seen by millions of people, Manchester City Council has now backed down.

Council leader Bev Craig said said the signs “could be clearer” and that some other fines issued on the street over the past year would be quashed.

T-shirt designer and filmmaker Zoe said her problems began because the ‘Pay At Machine’ sign on the street pointed to both a council-run car park and private one.

After unsuccessfully arguing her case, she submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the council about how many fines had been issued on the street.

But the council knocked it back.

She then scoured council documents and found there had been a significant rise in the number of penalties issued in the first year the SIP car park was open.

After a month-long campaign that included challenging Greater Manchester metro mayor Andy Burnham on a BBC Radio Manchester phone-in, she finally won her battle.

“The only part of it that I think is bad is the amount of effort it took to get heard, which is obviously not possible for a proper person to do,” she told the BBC.

Zoe added that “their system doesn’t work, but my system does,” putting down her success to being “persistent and annoying”.

She said she would now help other people who had been caught out in the same way.

Opposition Liberal Democrat councillor Alan Good applauded Zoe’s campaign.

But he said it “shouldn’t have taken the social media pressure that was largely due to Zoe’s following”.

He said the council should cancel fines going back further than the last 12 months, considering the big rise in penalties in 2018, when the privately-run car park was first opened.

Council leader Craig – who directly contacted the campaign – said she thanked Zoe for drawing attention to the situation.

She said the signs on the street complied with all the rules, but that there would be changes.

Craig added: “We’re going to address this as soon as possible with new signs, by relocating the metre and by asking the owners of the nearby private car park to take down their signs which have contributed to confusion.

“As a goodwill gesture, we will also quash any pending or unpaid tickets relating to Collier Street – including Zoe’s – and review our records of fines for the last 12 months in that location.

“We will refund anyone who said at the time that they believed they had paid for their parking.”