GYM users have been urged to take extra care when using a leisure centre car park after several have received parking fines.

Motorists using the council-owned car park at Harrow Leisure Centre, in Christchurch Avenue, Harrow, say they are fed up with the new ticketing system that has left several with parking fines.

Leisure centre users have raised a number of concerns with the system, which came into force earlier this year and is free for the first three hours, including the speed of machines and the fact that you cannot have three hours for free when using the mobile app RingGo.

Kandasamy Mahendra, of Monro Gardens, Harrow Weald, joined the Everyone Active gym in May this year in a bid to get fit.

But now he says he is seriously considering cancelling his membership after facing so many problems with the machines.

He said: “I have never been to this car park without seeing a queue of several people at each machine.

“They are so slow and so temperamental. You think you have typed one thing into the machine but in reality you’ve accidentally added an extra letter or number, or missed one off, but the machine doesn’t recognised that at all and prints the ticket anyway.

“I feel so sorry for all the older people who come here. The buttons are so tiny you can’t see I thing and mistake a zero for the letter O.”

After being issued with a parking fine himself, he says he was spoken to a number of car park users who have also been issued with tickets.

One driver told him that they had received a ticket at the car park after the machine failed to recognise the first letter of their registration – despite the rest of the registration being correct.

Meanwhile Harrow Times chief photographer Peter Beal also received a parking fine while at the car park, after accidentally inputting an extra letter into his registration.

One woman, who witnessed a traffic warden try to issue a fine for a car while the driver was queueing for a ticket, said: “It’s laughable, they’re just so desperate to find money in any way they can.

“It’s just a cash cow for the council.”

Now Harrow council have warned drivers to double check their entries when inputting registration numbers into the machines.

A spokesperson said: “It is important for residents to be careful when they are inputting their registration number into the car park pay and display machines to avoid a penalty charge notice (PCN) being issued.

“If the information on the ticket is incorrect then it is difficult for civil enforcement officers to ensure the correct fare has been paid.

“All car parking machines vary throughout the borough, and we are aware of the concerns about the speed of machine operation at the Leisure Centre.

“We are reviewing the operation of the machine to see if we can speed up the time it takes to process.”