It is "outrageous" that parking tickets are being issued to some firefighters at fire stations, their union has said.

The Fire Brigades Union's Jim Barbour said retained firefighters attending emergencies had to park outside some stations as there were no facilities.

He called on private contractor NCP to "review its policy".

However, the Roads Service said it had "not issued any instruction to NCP to specifically target vehicles being used by the fire brigade".

Mr Barbour said there had never been a problem in the past, as the vehicles were clearly marked as being owned by firefighters.

"It beggars belief that firefighters en-route to emergency incidents, where they will have to place their lives at risk, are now to be subject to parking fines through no fault of their own," he said.

He said it was "not good enough" that firefighters were told they could appeal against the fines.

In a statement, the Roads Service said if cars were "clearly displaying formal identification... we will ensure that NCP adopt a sensitive approach to enforcement, particularly in the vicinity of fire stations."

Agreed. Leave the firies alone. We had problems in an area where we worked where the parking nazis would actively target us (one of the boys in plain clothes heard them bragging). Well didn't that one start a war and a half. In the end the parking nazis had to walk on foot as we kept giving them tickets for parking on footpaths, fail to use indicators etc etc