A market trader has set up a living room protest in a supermarket car park after a parking fine ‘spiralled out of control' into a court judgment.

Michael Moody, 47, visited Booths in Windermere, Cumbria, for coffee and cake in February 2023.

More than a year later, in November 2024, Michael tried to apply for a loan to renovate his house, when he was refused and told his credit history was ‘as bad as it can get'.

He said: "I've been building up my entire life to get to the point where I can use credit to get out of market trading as a career."

"I've got two mortgages that have just come to the end of their fixed term, and they've both gone up."

"One's about £400 it's gone up, the other is about £300 to £400 depending on where it goes each month."

The dad-of-three, from Skegness, Lincs., found out he had a county court judgment against him while applying for the loan.

He said: "To my absolute shock, she said ‘I'm sorry, you've got a CCJ, your credit history is as bad as it can get, we can't do anything with credit with you at all."

"I was in absolute shock. "

"I felt sick. My wife and I had to work out what the CCJ was, what I'd done."

After calling the court, Michael found out he had incurred a fine of £297 after staying 41 minutes too long in the Booths car park, which has a maximum stay of two hours.

On Friday, the market trader of 30 years spent his birthday in the car park of the Booths store, in Windermere, to protest the black mark on his financial record.

He travelled more than 400 miles in a round trip to set up a ‘living room' in the shop's car park, where he protested alongside his dog Roscoe.

Michael, who has traded from a lorry at events including Glastonbury and military air shows for three decades, isn't planning on backing down.

He plans on returning to the car park in the coming weeks to set up a Santa's grotto, where he plans on giving out presents to local children.

Michael says he is happy to pay the fine, but he wants the judgement to be removed so his credit score can be restored.

He added: "What I'm asking for from Booths now, is I'm just asking them to give me the contact details of someone at Parkingeye who will speak to me like a human being, and they refuse to do that."

A Booths spokesperson said: "Mr Moody has been misadvised that Booths would be able to set aside his claim against the CCJ, at this point in the process, Booths are unable to intervene in this matter as the case has been escalated to debt recovery and referred to the County Court."

"While Booths have sympathy with Mr Moody around his mortgage issues and will support his case with both Parking Eye and debt recovery agency, he needs to follow the process that has been shared with him and pursue the matter with the court."

A Parkingeye spokesperson said: "The motorist correctly received a Parking Charge in February 2023 for staying 41 minutes over the two-hour maximum stay period highlighted in the signage. "

"Parkingeye operates a BPA (British Parking Association) audited appeals process, which motorists can use to appeal their parking charge.  "

"The motorist failed to submit an appeal to highlight any mitigating circumstances for breaking the rules of the car park and failed to respond to successive rounds of correspondence from us to the registered address of his vehicle. "

"As a result of him failing to communicate with us or settle the charge, his case was escalated to debt recovery and has now been referred to the County Court. "

"We can confirm that the motorist first got in touch with us on November 14 this year to settle the payment and request that we remove the County Court Judgement - this would need to be done directly with himself and the County Court and we sent guidance on how to do this on November 25."