SO Mrs Jenny Baker (Your Letters, January 2) has also fallen foul of the very confusing Christmas free parking notices posted on Malvern Hills District Council's pay and display ticket vending machines: so did a member of my family in the Grange Road South car park on December 9.

As the registered keeper of the vehicle involved, I went to see the notice for myself the following day and, indeed, found it most misleading.

I took the above photo and appealed against the penalty at the customer service centre in Malvern Library on December 12. I was told by the staff there that they must be getting ten such complaints a day and that action was in hand to make the signs clearer.

Given that they were simple desk top computer generated A4 notices in plastic envelopes, this should have been the work of minutes. I was told that my appeal would be considered. But the notices remained, my initial appeal was rejected and yet more people, like Mrs Baker, were misled and fined throughout the run up to Christmas.

What was meant to be a gesture of goodwill by MHDC has spectacularly backfired.

I continue to object to this charge and will do so throughout every appeal process possible. I hope that others who have been similarly unfairly penalised will also contest their charges until they too have been revoked.

It is simple, shoddy administration, which could and should have been corrected as soon as the first complaint was made. This practice would not have been allowed by trading standards or the Advertising Standards Authority in a commercial advertisement - our council should not think that it can work below those minimum standards and should have the good grace to realise it has got it wrong and rescind the unfair penalties it has imposed.

CHARLES CLAYTON, Hampden Road, Malvern Link.