Rose Green solicitor responds to resident's parking concerns

Residents have called the £100 fines 'shocking’ and ‘unpleasant’, claiming they spoil a sense of togetherness essential to Rose Green’s semi-rural community.

One resident, Angela MacTavish, said she was fined on December 30, despite the fact that the she only spent five minutes in the nearby Co-Op, and the car park was only being used by one other car.

She said she'd parked in the forecourt before – often on quiet weekends – without issue, adding: “I was shocked by the excessive amount of the fine, possibly acceptable in Coole Bevis's urban offices in Brighton, Horsham, Hove and Worthing but not in the semi-rural crossroad community of Rose Green."

But Mrs Sen said the fines, which were introduced towards the end of last year, are a last resort. The solicitors office has been on Nyetimber Lane since 2003 and the forecourt, she said, has been private for a very long time. The fines are simply the latest in a series of attempts to secure the parking spaces for clients and staff.

"I don’t want anyone to get a ticket. I would just like people to know that it’s private - but it was always being disregarded. We tried concrete bollards, we put big white signs up on the forecourt saying ‘private’, we had lines marked up for us, we tried putting a chain across. And all of them were knocked over or driven over, or whatever. People just wouldn’t pay attention.

"The staff have had accidents trying to park, and the draining cover has had to be replaced so many times from heavy vehicles driving over it. We’ve had to pay for insurance and tarmacking - it's been hard.”

She went on to say that Coole Bevis doesn't profit from the fines, and instead all proceeds go to parking management providers GXS Services ltd. For Mrs Sen, the fines aren't about making money, they're about preserving the integrity of her business.

"We don’t want to take on the community or anything like that,” she said. “We want to help them, protect them, serve them, and that's always been the ethos.”

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