PARKING bosses have been blasted for not being able to tell the time after incorrectly booking residents.

People living in Denville Road, Bank Top, Blackburn, were told in a letter that parking attendants would start enforcing a residents-only zone "from midnight on Monday September 25".

Garth Thomasson, 60, took that to mean the midnight overnight from Monday to Tuesday, not Sunday to Monday, so he did not display his parking permit on the Monday.

But Mr Thomasson was given a £35 fine at 8.17am on September 25 after parking outside his own house without displaying the permit.

Housing association Twin Valley Homes, which brought in the parking restrictions on the road, intended the letter to mean midnight from Sunday to Monday.

However chiefs at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, guardians of worldwide time keeping, said Twin Valley Homes was wrong as the phrase midnight was "logically meaningless" as it could refer to the start or the end of the day.

Mr Thomasson, 60, said: "When you go out for midnight mass or New Year's Eve you don't turn up a day early, it's midnight of that night."

The retired railway signalman has paid the fine to National Clamps, the company which operates the scheme on behalf of Twin Valleys, as he did not want to incur any more penalties.

But the grandfather-of-six has written to Twin Valley demanding his money back, and said if the housing association does not pay up he is prepared to take the matter to the small claims court.

Twin Valley Homes has launched a review of Mr Thomasson's case.

But a spokesman declined to comment on the ambiguity caused by the word midnight.

Kevin Ruth, managing director of Twin Valley Homes, added: "In response to requests from our tenants on Denville Road estate we have introduced a residents parking scheme, to prevent shoppers and people who work nearby from using spaces near tenants' homes.

"Information signs went up three weeks ago and residents were issued with their permits to display last week."