HUNDREDS of letters demanding payment for parking fines have been wrongly issued by Ealing Council.

Last Thursday a computer glitch meant 250 "reminder notices" were sent out to car owners who had contested their parking fines in the last ten days.

Furious residents spent up to 40 minutes in a queue trying to speak to the council's customer services.

The letters mistakenly demanded £80 to be paid - despite recipients thinking they should not have been fined in the first place.

Si Melber, a motoring journalist from Bernard Avenue, Northfield, said he was fined for parking in front of a "dropped kerb" in front of his own house - even though he had registered with the council to do so.

"I showed the warden the letter that Ealing Council sent me which said in black and white I could park there and she just ignored it," he said.

"Clearly they have not been correctly trained.

"She was not aware of the rules and she brushed me away - she did not want to know."

Mr Melber got his letter in the post asking for £80 on Thursday. He spent 19 minutes on the phone to the council to complain.

"When they finally picked up the phone the man at the other end told me most people had been hanging on for 40 minutes," he said.

"He said he was going to throw a sickie on Monday because of all the calls."

Head of parking at Ealing Council Philip Burns confirmed the letters had been sent out by mistake due to a computer glitch in a new IT system introduced last November.

"It is a lot of people," he said. "We don't want to upset 250 of our customers but as a council we deal with around 200,000 charge notices a year, so that number of people is actually fairly low."

The letters of apology and decisions about the appeals were sent out on Monday, at a cost of about £80.

It is the second time in six months a computer glitch at the council has wrongly billed residents.

In July a computer mistake led to 35,000 homeowners being charged a total of £5.6million extra council tax in one month.

"To have an error is obviously a bad thing," said Mr Burns. "We are very sorry about it.

"We are always trying to improve our services and this IT system was one of the key things we are putting in."

But in a further embarrassing blunder, the Ealing Times can reveal many residents could have been fined in error due to incorrect information published in official council letters about parking in front of dropped kerbs.

Since October 1 last year, a residents' permit has to be displayed in cars even if owners have registered to park by their house - something the council has so far failed to mention.

Now, thanks to the Ealing Times' investigation, the process is being overhauled, to ensure more people are not unfairly targeted.

Mr Burns said: "A mistake has been made. There could be a number of tickets issued to residents who have been confused by the letter.

"The notice given to people is being amended to make it perfectly clear what they can and can't do.

"We are resending the instructions to everyone on the register."

He added: "We will look at the tickets which have been issued and cross reference them with those people who have registered their kerbs."

But critics say the recent blunders will just add to residents' mistrust of the department.

Ealing Council's Labour group leader Sonika Nirwal said: "It is an issue of trust. It is very important if people get fined that they have because they did something wrong.

"You just can't make mistakes like this. They the Conservatives are always talking about value for money but you can't do that by wrongly charging people.

"They need to do more work on their systems because things are not working very well at the moment. This is not the first time something like this has happened."

New parking ticket contractors were hired by the Conservative leadership in September in a bid to clamp down on over-zealous wardens and to create more faith in the parking services department.

And council leader Cllr Jason Stacey even told the Ealing Times he would punish traffic wardens based on the number of tickets they got wrong.

But in a further twist Mr Melber's wife, Barbara, was issued another ticket on Tuesday - in exactly the same place.

Mr Melber said: "The parking policy is awful and inept. I did not just illegally park but registered with the council - there is no question that it was incorrectly issued. As incredible as it sounds, my wife's car was ticketed on Tuesday.

"It is ridiculous. I am very frustrated - it is a waste of everybody's time and money. As soon as someone takes control of the parking services in the borough the better."