Malvern Hills District Council has charged me £20 for making a simple mistake.

I chose to park in the new car park behind the Unicorn for two hours to avoid parking in an awkward spot on St Ann's Road.

However, I was 12 minutes late returning from an important business meeting. Even though the car park was more than half empty an over-zealous MHDC employee was busy fixing penalty notices to the windscreens of a number of cars.

As it happens I had actually overpaid 20p to park because the ticket machine did not give change for the £1 inserted (25 per cent overpaid but only 10 per cent late!). My appeal to MHDC fell on stony ground.

You only have to look at MHDC's car parks and the roads nearby to see that people avoid them in order to save the parking charge; Victoria Road is a good example.

Now MHDC have employed a zealot to ensure that sensible parking in Malvern can be financially risky.

I am a local tax payer and I have resolved to never again park in an MHDC car park - I cannot afford to make a similar mistake.

I will, instead, be adding to the traffic congestion in Malvern by driving up and down seeking a troublesome street parking slot or, perhaps, not bothering to visit, or use, the town centre facilities at all. Or should I just park on those double yellow lines on Church Street? After all, everyone else does!

Mark Tovey, Wykewane, Malvern.