Fury as tourist slapped with £170 bill for short overstay at UK seaside town's landmark

A tourist was left furious after receiving a £170 for overstaying by less than seven minutes during a family trip to St Michael's Mount in . Amy Lathan said she never received an initial £60 Parking Charge Notice (PCN) after her visit in early April, and only learned of the fine weeks later when a letter demanding £170 arrived at her home in Nottingham.

The mother-of-two told she had queued for 15 minutes to pay for three hours of parking, and she believed a 15-minute grace period was in place at St Michael's Mount and Long Stay Marazion car park. When Amy received the letter, she claimed it was not clear if the seven minutes were before she had paid for the ticket or after it had expired. Now, she's struggling to appeal the charge, which escalated because the original PCN allegedly went undelivered.

Amy said: "No letter from this car park was received previously so I could pay the £60. I was also driving my dad's car so the fine is in his name, there is no way to change this and there is no way to contact the car park owners to rectify or lodge a complaint."

When Amy told Initial Parking she wanted to appeal and change the name, they reportedly replied that due to the length of time the PCN had been open, it had now been passed to a debt recovery agent and therefore could not transfer the liability.

The parking company also said a letter was sent and that all letters are electronically franked as proof of postage.

Cornwall Live reported it had seen a 'certificate of postage' that confirmed a document was sent to the recipient through 'hybrid mail' on April 10 at 1.30pm.

She continued: "It's just not on. A jump from £60 to £170. It's robbing. I've been [to Cornwall] a couple of times but I won't be coming again for a while."

A letter from Debt Recovery Plus to Amy reportedly stated that the time had come to decide on a plan, suggesting that multiple letters had been sent.

A spokesperson for Initial Parking said: "We can see that the motorist was on site for three hours six minutes and 51 seconds without payment, no appeal was received and therefore, the charge progressed to debt recovery."

In a recent move backed by Government to try and simplify parking, rather than downloading multiple from different providers.

The National Parking Platform (NPP) promises to join hundreds of parking sites into a single system, and connect to the apps and payment methods drivers already use.