Drivers have accused a leading car park management company of issuing “false” parking fines – leaving one mother to defend herself from multiple debt collection agencies sent by the company.

Jane Winder says she was sent letters from five different debt collection agencies each asking her to pay £170 after she was accused of not purchasing a £2.30 parking ticket at a car park in Lancashire managed by Euro Car Parks.

She is one of several drivers who have spoken to Guardian Money about their experiences and described how they were threatened with court action, despite telling us that they provided evidence that they had paid for their parking.

Euro Car Parks manages more than 3,000 car parks across the UK and Ireland for organisations including supermarkets, hospitals, airports and universities.

The firm recently landed in hot water when it was hit with a £473,000 fine by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority after it failed to hand over information to the regulator.

The company uses automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology to identify if people have paid, and sends out parking charge notices (PCNs) fining those who appear not to have the right ticket.

According to Popla, an independent appeals service, PCNs issued by Euro Car Parks were the second most-appealed fine behind those issued by another major firm, with 12,000 appeal submissions for Euro Car Parks’ PCNs in 2023, and 15,000 in 2024.

In November 2023 the company sent Winder a £100 parking charge notice and gave her 28 days to pay the debt.

The 51-year-old says she appealed what she considered to be a “false” notice, sending a bank statement and photo of her parking ticket to Euro Car Parks to prove she had paid. Her appeal was rejected – however, she was asked to only pay a £20 administration fee.

Believing she had done “nothing wrong”, she ignored the request for £20 – until she was bombarded with debt collection agency letters.

The first arrived in March 2024 when the Preston resident was contacted by a company called Debt Recovery Plus. It said she owed £170 and that if she did not settle the debt, she faced court action, and her access to mortgages, loans, and credit cards could be affected.

Winder called the agency to say she had evidence of payment and would not be paying the debt, but she says they insisted she pay it.

Over the next 14 months, Winder received letters from five different debt collection agencies asking for the £170 payment.

“I was quite worried that someone might come knocking at my door demanding this money that I did not owe – it was horrible,” she says.

Preston Combined Court Centre contacted her in June 2025, stating that Euro Car Parks had put in a court claim and that she was to attend a hearing over the debt which had by this point risen to £278.

Confident in her defence against the company, she says: “I had to stand up for the little people, because these big companies can afford to do this, and the majority of people will actually pay with the threat of court and debt collectors.”

At the last minute she was told by the court that Euro Car Parks had discontinued the debt.

She said: “I took it all this way for two years and now they have just called it all off … To me, that was an admission of guilt.”

Other drivers have reported similar stories on the reviews website Trustpilot – where, at the time of writing, 99% of the 3,000-plus reviews of the company were one-star – and the social media site Facebook, and to Guardian Money.

Kelly Haydock was issued with a £100 PCN in November 2023 after parking while she did some afternoon shopping in Manchester.

Again, the 55-year-old sent Euro Car Parks a photo of her parking ticket and bank statement, but had her appeal rejected. She was overwhelmed by threats from debt collectors.

She says the debt collectors “would not listen” to her and demanded payment.

The Wigan resident describes the debt collectors as using “bullying tactics” to try to get her to pay the debt, which had increased to £170 by June 2024.

She received a letter from Civil National Business Centre in May 2025 stating that Euro Car Parks had taken her to court for £277.

But just before the court date, the foster care worker for Wigan council received a call from one of the debt collection firms, which agreed to throw out the case if she paid £75.

She says: “I shouldn’t have paid the money. The job I’ve got as a foster carer can be quite stressful, and I can deal with that alone.

“But having the threat of bailiffs and courts, people bullying you and not believing what you say, is truly horrible.

“It caused me a lot of stress, and I just paid the money so they could all go away.”

After one-and-a-half years of dealing with Euro Car Parks and multiple debt collectors, Haydock says she feels “very bitter” about the whole experience.

Michal Lucki – whose bank statement and parking ticket were also rejected in an appeal – says that fighting Euro Car Parks and multiple debt collectors over the £170 PCN was “mentally draining”.

He says the two-and-a-half year ordeal, which began in June 2023 when he parked in a Bedfordshire car park, had affected his life and put him in a nervous state.

Lucki was finally freed from Euro Car Parks and the debt collectors in December 2025 when the court claim for £282 was struck out after the parking company failed to pay the hearing fee to the county court.

Guardian Money sent the details of the cases to Euro Car Parks and made multiple attempts to obtain a response, but it did not respond.