A Sainsbury’s shopper has hit out at “unreasonable” new parking restrictions in an Angel store’s car park.
Jennie Loveday said that she was worried that many customers of the Sainsbury’s in Angel would now be fined if they do not complete their shop within a hour.
The store in Liverpool Road previously allowed cars to park for two hours, but has since slashed the time by half, removing physical barriers to filter cars in favour of a camera-enforced system.
A sign outside the car park, managed by Euro Car Parks, warns that those who do not return to their cars within an hour risk incurring a fine of £100.
Warning to anyone that uses the Sainsbury's Angel car park. The maximum parking time has changed from 2 hours to 1 hour. New signage that looks remarkably similar to old signage was going up today (10 Oct)
— Islington Resident (@IslingtonResid3) October 10, 2023
Will we see anything in store to warn users of the change? I doubt it. pic.twitter.com/rBU1Xys5YA
Jennie, who lives opposite the Barnsbury Jobcentre, said: “I know of many elderly and disabled people that quite frankly cannot get in and out of there in an hour. It’s completely unreasonable.”
She added that already long queues in the store would make it even harder for people to complete their shop in the allowed timeframe.
Jennie said: “The queues are horrendous. They only have a maximum of two tills open that actually have a cashier.
“At the weekend the queues for those two tills are halfway down the shop.”
The Barnsbury resident was also concerned that without physical barriers the car park will become a “free-for-all”.
Jennie said: “Taking those barriers away it’s going to be a free-for-all, it’s going to be chaos.
“People are going to get in, find they can’t get a space, they’re going to drive round and round.
“In the meantime, you’ve already been clocked as entering the car park. Your time is ticking.”
A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s said: “We regularly review our stores to make sure we offer the best possible experience to our customers and we welcome feedback.
“We have recently updated the parking at our Liverpool Road store to make it easier for our customers to use and make sure customers can find a space when they need one.
“We have also changed some of our checkouts, for example by introducing larger self-serve spaces to help customers shopping with trolleys.
“Our colleagues are on hand to help anyone who may need support using them and we continue to offer manned checkouts for our customers who wish to use them.”
Euro Car Parks did not respond to a request for comment.
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