Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hello,

The situation is as follows:

The driver pulled up into the car park of the OK Diner - Derby at 08:32am in order to visit the diner for breakfast and to go to the toilet.

Parked up and exited the car to go into the diner but then realised the diner was shut so then walked to the small service/petrol station adjacent to the diner to use their facilities before returning to the car and exiting at 08:37am.

In total the car was in the car park for 5 minutes.

This is the NTK recieved:



When entering the car park there was a 'Parking for customers only' sign but it was not obvious that the car would need to be registered within the diner itself and since there was no clear opening times from the road it was only once in the car park that it was obvious that the diner was shut.

Unfortunately there are no current photos of the signage because we do not live locally in order to check and google streetview has no angles in wihc the signage is captured.



We have seen that there are many complaints online regarding SmartParking LTD and the OK Diner locations.

Also whilst the apparent issue date of the fine notice was 26/03/2026, we did not receive it until yesterday (06/04/2026) leaving only 3 days to pay the fine before the 14 day period is up (as if that isnt intentional fearmongering). 

Please can we have some advice on what to do?

Thank you

Annoyingly there doesnt seem to be any photos of the parking signage anywhere.

Also the diner opening times were on on the door of the diner but not obvious as you drove in (there's no opening times on the large roadside sign).

It turned out that the diner opened at 9am and the driver was there at 8:36.