Officials from a boxing club in Shrewsbury have hit out at traffic wardens after parents were issued with tickets when they parked in a bus stop for ‘a couple of minutes’ to pick up their children.

Stuart Green, one of the assistant coaches at Shrewsbury Amateur Boxing Club in Smithfield Road, said the tickets were issued at about 7.30pm on Wednesday when parents parked their vehicles at a bus stop across the road from the gym.

Mr Green said the car park was ‘small and was absolutely rammed with cars’ at the time the tickets were issued and parents were there for just a short time.

Shropshire Council today defended its stance on the issue and said the Department for Transport considered parking in a bus stop to be a ‘serious contravention’ of highway regulations.

Mr Green said: “There we- re only a couple of cars par-ked for a couple of minutes. It is more like a lay-by than a bus stop really. It was only being used to park up quic-kly to get the kids and go.”

He said the club’s car park had been full and a pair of traffic wardens had spotted the vehicles in the bus stop and told one of the club members that the owners of the cars needed to move them.

Mr Green claimed one of the wardens said that they would wait five minutes before putting a ticket on the cars, but by the time the parents got outside within a ‘minute or so’ the tickets had already been issued.

“It is a hell of a busy road and you can’t just let kids run across it. At night, there are no buses using it but on Saturdays we make sure nobody uses the stop, but they just didn’t give us any leeway,” he said.

A Shropshire Council spokesman said: “The Department for Transport considers the parking of vehicles in a bus stop to be a serious contravention of the highway regulations. In this respect no observation time is required prior to the issue of a penalty charge notice and commands the higher rate of penalty at £70, a discount of £35 would be accepted if paid within 14 days of the date of issue.”