Council bosses are reviewing their contract with parking enforcers embroiled in a ticket faking scandal.

UK Parking Control – which patrols car parks on the Wincheap Industrial Estate – has admitted it faked time stamps on tickets to catch out legally-parked drivers.

Staff members, who have since left the firm, ran the racket to target motorists in Lincoln, the company said last month.

Despite its admission, Canterbury City Council continues to employ the company to enforce parking at Bamboo Tiger, Carpets 4 Less and Beds 4 Us.

Its contract began in February 2014, with revenue from fines in the car park pocketed by the firm.

UKPC hands on 10% of net profit to the council, which it knocks off the businesses’ service charges.

City council spokesman Rob Davies said: “The council is aware of recent allegations about UKPC.

“We are making inquiries and considering options for the future management of the car park in consultation with our tenants.”

Last month UKPC admitted that its operatives patrolling NHS car parks in other parts of the country had exploited a loophole in the firm’s photograph system.

Drivers who had parked within their allowed time limit were ticketed with doctored evidence purportedly showing they had, in fact, exceeded expiry time.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Neil Horton claimed he parked his car in July for just 15 minutes but still received a fine, despite the car park providing 90 minutes’ free parking.

Photographic evidence he received from UKPC stated that he had left his vehicle for almost two hours.

However, the images, allegedly two hours apart, showed the same car behind Mr Horton’s with its boot open in both pictures.

A response from UKPC read: “We regret to confirm that a limited number of pictures of vehicles, at a small number of car parks, have had their timestamp altered by a few of our employees to make it appear as though the vehicles had over-stayed when this was not the case.

"We have taken this issue extremely seriously and decided that even though a number of the relevant parking charges are likely to have been legitimately issued, we will refund all potentially affected parking charges for over-stays issued by these employees, to ensure that there is no room for error.”

"We are making inquiries and considering options for the future management of the car park in consultation with our tenants" - council spokesman Rob Davies

The company has also had its access to DVLA vehicle keeper data suspended and is being investigated by the British Parking Association (BPA), of which it is a member.

The city council says it introduced parking enforcement at Wincheap at the request of the three businesses because people were using the car park, which is free, and heading into the city.

Customers were unable to park there and the firms potentially lost business, said Mr Davies.

UKPC manages car parks at around 1,400 sites, using a combination of automatic number plate recognition and parking attendants.