YOUR report headlined “Remembrance parade troops get parking tickets” (Oxford Mail, Wednesday) no doubt made an impression on a lot of readers.

However, I am concerned that in reporting this you may have left some readers thinking that the parking tickets in question were issued incorrectly. The report suggested that minibuses driven by a unit of Territorial Army medics were given parking tickets after parking on single yellow lines, just before 11am, at which point parking is allowed.

This is not correct. In fact, the vehicles in question were parked on double yellow lines, where parking is not allowed at any time.

When our enforcement officer found the vehicles in this position, the restrictions in this street had not been suspended.

Under such circumstances, it is very difficult to ignore such vehicles – and we would, almost certainly, come in for criticism from people attending the parade who had taken the trouble to park their vehicles properly if we did.

The enforcement officer’s job is to be fair and consistent in applying the rules, and that is exactly what we did here.

There is, of course, plenty of discretion built into the system to enable parking tickets to be cancelled when mitigating circumstances become known.

This is exactly what happened here – our client Oxfordshire County Council cancelled the tickets when the circumstances became known.

This is a story where the service was delivered absolutely correctly – the penalty charge notice was properly issued but discretion and leniency were demonstrated when the mitigating circumstances became known.

I was also concerned to read the views of a local resident that our on street staff were out “in force” and can confirm that we deployed no extra people on Sunday.

I understand in previous years the event’s organisers, Oxford City Council, have issued permits for parking in the area in question, and also asked for parking restrictions in this road to be suspended. It might be that this would be helpful to reinstate next year to avoid drivers being confused about where they can park.

NSL delivers parking services in dozens of boroughs across the country, and we work hard to ensure that we support events such as Remembrance Sunday parades – for example, by discouraging parking on double yellow lines, which can be extremely disruptive when large numbers of people are attending one area at the same time.

TIM COWN, Director of Communications, NSL