UK Parking Firm Cuts No Ice With Ticket for Swedish Snowmobile

Warwick is not known as a hotspot for snowmobiling, especially on a sunny summer afternoon. But a Swedish man has received a ticket alleging his snowmobile was parked illegally in the city one day in June. Now he faces a fine of 1,211 kronor (£90) .

Krister Nylander, who lives in the village of Bollstabruk, more than 200 miles north of Stockholm, says he has not left Sweden this year. Crucially, neither has his snowmobile.

"England doesn't have that much snow, does it?" inquired Mr Nylander when contacted by telephone yesterday at his home. "Particularly not in June.

"My snowmobile is parked in my barn. It has never left Sweden. I use it for recreation locally," he said. "If I wanted to go on holiday with my snowmobile, I think I would go somewhere else where there is snow, like Finland."

Mr Nylander, who is 32 and works as an engineer at a sewage and water treatment plant, is one among thousands of EU citizens who have been introduced to the delights of cross-border debt collection thanks to the technical ingenuity of a British company which specialises in recovering fines from foreign vehicles.

The demand he received in the post was sent out by Euro Parking Collections (EPC), a London firm which acts as an agent for more than 40 local authorities across Europe, including six London boroughs. Mr Nylander's ticket was sent out on behalf of CP Plus, a company which manages car parks around Britain.

EPC's website says it has been given the "power of autorney" - which sounds like a pun but may just be a spelling mistake - for the collection of parking fines, speeding tickets and bus lane infringements. Neither EPC nor CP Plus could be contacted yesterday.

Mr Nylander said: "To be fair, the letter had the right number plate, BPM 014, and the correct vehicle type, a Yamaha model.

"But I don't think anyone realised it was a snowmobile. My family have all smiled at it. I'm going to have to deny [the company] their money. I may frame the ticket."

Mr Nylander said he had barely left his local county in which he lives in Sweden this year. He has only been to Britain once, as a schoolboy when 16. The ship he came on was scheduled to dock in Tilbury for two days but was stuck in the port for five due to a strike.

"We never made it to Warwick, even then," he added. "But it wasn't that I didn't like Britain."