A QUICK thinking charity worker has had a parking ticket cancelled after taking photographs of unclear street markings just days before they were repainted.

Gordon Roscoe, aged 73, of Kiln Brow, Bromley Cross took snaps of the "motorcycles only" parking bay in Le Mans Crescent after finding a penalty notice stuck to the windscreen of his silver Ford Focus.

He said: "I saw the road markings when I parked but they were so faded and old that I thought they didn't apply any more. Otherwise they wouldn't have left it them such a state. And it's not as if I didn't buy a valid ticket from the machine."

When he came back to his car after a shift at the Cancer Research shop in Newport Street he could not believe he had been ticketed.

He said: "I went straight across the road and bought a disposable camera."

But not long after submitting the photos along with his appeal a neighbour told him that he had noticed that the markings had been repainted.

"I thought this was an obvious admission that the signs were inadequate," he said.

Ironically, Mr Roscoe used to be a keen motorcyclist and thinks the parking bay is useless.

"There's nowhere to chain up your bike," he said, "so you're basically giving an open invitation to thieves by leaving it there."

A Bolton Council spokesman said that the road markings were unsatisfactory and the parking fine had been cancelled, but she denied that the sudden repainting was anything other than coincidence.

She said: "The work programme was agreed last year."

Mr Roscoe was delighted with the decision despite having spent nearly the cost of the fine proving his innocence.