Foodbank is hit with £500 in parking fines… for spending 15 minutes picking up donations
A food bank has been handed a £500 parking ticket for staying a few minutes too long in a bay while collecting donations in Tesco.
Middlesbrough Food Bank said it had been using its delivery site at Parkway Shopping Center in Middlesbrough for years.
But since January it has been fined hundreds of pounds over newly installed parking cameras. In one case, volunteers stayed just 51 seconds over the 10-minute limit.
The charity said five separate parking fines of £100 each were issued in eight weeks.
‘I’ll fight this every step of the way. We will not take this lying down. “I think it’s ridiculous,” Tracey Godfrey-Harrison, the food bank’s project manager, told the Daily Mail.
He added: ‘I think it’s awful that anyone would be fined for something so small but we’re a charity so £500 is £500 less than the £500 we have to buy food for people who need it.’
Ms Godfrey-Harrison said the food bank was not receiving enough food donations so was relying on cash donations to buy food.
‘This money is a quarter of our monthly shopping bill. ‘This is coming out of the mouth of people in Middlesbrough who need it… I think it’s disgusting,’ he added.
One parking ticket showed the volunteers were only 51 seconds over the signposted 10-minute limit.
In two other incidents, volunteers were fined for staying in the bay for 14 minutes and 15 minutes to load their vans.
Middlesbrough Foodbank said they had been using a shopping center delivery area to collect food donations from Tesco for years but were suddenly fined five times.
Ms Godfrey-Harrison said: ‘We go in, collect the donations and leave. Since we have to go to the front of the store by car, it takes about 15 minutes.
‘But we don’t wander around or go shopping. ‘We do what we have to do and get back to the van.’
He said the minibus they were using wouldn’t fit into normal-sized stalls in the parking lot.
Both Tesco and Ms Godfrey-Harrison said the land did not belong to Tesco but to Parkway Shopping Centre, which hired contractor UK Parking Control (UKPC) to issue the fines.
The food bank project manager said he had appealed the parking fines, but that appeal had already been rejected.
He expected all his objections would be rejected as they would be considered by the UKPC.
In the letter seen by the Mail, UKPC wrote to the food bank: ‘We have carefully considered your objection based on the information provided and the evidence supporting the parking charge.
‘In this case, after completing our assessment, we consider that the parking fee was correctly charged as the vehicle was parked at a collection point.’
If the food bank had decided to take the parking ticket to an independent appeals service, if it lost it would have to pay the full £100 fine rather than the reduced price of £60 they can now pay.
The food bank’s PCN (pictured) showed volunteers had only stayed 51 seconds beyond the 10 minutes stated on the signs
Food bank project manager Tracey Godfrey-Harrison says fines are ‘disgusting’
Ms Godfrey-Harrison said: ‘Something needs to be done about this because it’s ridiculous.’
He added: ‘It is not Tesco that is at fault here, it is the car park company.
‘Punishments don’t work very well. People are already struggling due to the cost of living crisis and people are having to put gas in their cars and food in their mouths.
‘Even if these fines don’t come in the mail and raise people’s anxiety levels, people are already going through a lot in their lives.’
The food bank said they feed everyone who comes to them and have helped more than 40,000 people in the last three years.
After contacted by the Daily Mail, a representative of Parkway Mall said it would contact car park management to cancel the tickets.
The spokesman said: ‘I’m very sorry to hear what happened.
‘However, if a vehicle enters the service area, parking fines come into play as that area is limited to authorized service vehicles only.
‘This is probably why fines were imposed rather than volunteers overstaying.
‘However, we recognize the important and valuable work the food bank does for the community and want to ensure they continue to be supported. ‘We will be happy to contact the car park management company to request cancellation of the tickets.’
The charity said they needed 15 minutes to load their van with donations from Tesco in the shopping centre.
‘Going forward, we will also work with the foodbank to agree a more appropriate arrangement for future collections as we cannot continue to recover charges deducted for unauthorized access to the catchment area.’
The food bank confirmed the tickets had been canceled following inquiries from the Daily Mail.
A spokesman for Tesco said: ‘We are truly sorry to hear this as we have been long-time supporters of Middlesbrough Foodbank and the important work they do.
‘We do not own or operate the Parkway Shopping Center car park outside our Coulby Newham Extra store but we have now recorded the details of the Foodbank van to prevent it from receiving further parking fines and have reached out to shopping center management regarding existing tickets.’
UKPC has also been contacted for comment.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, UK food banks distributed 2.9 million emergency food parcels.
This equates to one packet every 11 seconds last year. This represents a 51 percent increase from five years ago, according to Hart Foodbank.
