Pregnant, overdue…but not a mum according to the wardens

An interesting dilemma reported in today's Daily Mail concerns a heavily pregnant woman who was fined for parking in a Mother and Baby parking space at Tesco.

Laura Howard, who's very heavily pregnant and in fact overdue, popped into Tesco for some last minute shopping before her baby was born. As she's finding it hard to move around at this late stage of pregnancy, she parked in a Mother and Baby slot and was fined £90.

When she complained to Tesco, it told her to take the matter up with the warden's employer, Safe Park, who told her: ' that because there wasn't a picture of a pregnant woman in the bay that I couldn't park there… I parked in the mother-and-toddler space because I thought heavily pregnant women who were struggling could do that.'

A spokesperson for the company Brian Walker, operations manager of Safe Park UK, declared: 'Pregnancy is not a disability. It is a lifestyle choice and these bays are aimed at being wider for buggies.'

The story, however, has a happy ending, as Tesco have said they'll stump up for the ticket. But was Laura right to park there? Have your say about this story in our new Talk! section here.

• Sick kid's parking ticket joke
• Asda polices mother and toddler bays
• This week's news