What started out as a £20 parking penalty for an Oxfordshire motorist has turned into a £500 nightmare with bailiffs on the doorstep.

Andrew White, of Bower End, Chalgrove, south Oxfordshire, was given the fine on January 7 after leaving his car in a residents' parking zone for less than 10 minutes in Knights Road, Blackbird Leys. He says he needed to park as close as he could to the home of his partner's mother, who had just had a kidney operation, because otherwise she would struggle to walk to the car.

But in the time it took to pick up relative Angie Ferguson, a parking attendant spotted the 36-year-old's Vauxhall Vectra illegally parked and slapped a ticket on it.

Mr White claims he was unaware a permit was needed and says he wrote to Control Plus, the company which carries out parking enforcement for Oxfordshire County Council, to ask it to be compassionate.

But the company replied telling him the ticket would be enforced.

Then, in March, he received a letter telling him the fine had risen to £60 - and he claims he then prepared to appeal against the ticket. He said: "I didn't do anything else about it after that, but I thought I had a case for appeal so waited for the council to send me a court hearing date. The next thing I knew, though, I had the bailiffs on the doorstep."

Bailiffs arrived at his home about five weeks ago to give him a notice of seizure for his car, worth between £600 and £700, and then returned a few days ago telling him the total fine had now risen to £533.04.

"I was shocked," he said. "I was just waiting for a court summons because I am quite willing to fight this in court."

But Helen Crozier, parking manager at Oxfordshire County Council, said all motorists who received fines were made aware of the appeals process. She said Mr White had not used his right to appeal.

She added: "The moral of the story is that people should not ignore parking tickets and hope the situation will go away. There is a clear appeals process and people with grievances should follow it. "