A widow is claiming victory after a car abandoned outside her home was finally towed away - after almost two years.
'Overjoyed' Joan Murray, 71, has been trying to have the illegally parked Vauxhall removed for the past 22 months.
Joan, from Blackpool, Lancashire, says it has been outside her property since September 2020, when it was abandoned with a note on the dashboard saying it had broken down..
She has worked tirelessly to get the car - which has no MOT and was parked with a wheel on the pavement - taken away.
The grieving widow said the motor made life difficult for visitors and local residents.
Joan's daughter reached out to her MP for advice but the nuisance motor was still sat there months later. It was finally removed this week to Joan's delight.
But she has finally won the battle after at last the council stepped in.
They finally took notice after she gave an interview to local paper Blackpool Gazette, and says speaking to the press was a "last resort" after being ignored for many months.
Now she found out the great news after returning home from having a coffee on Wednesday afternoon.
She said: “After 22 months, finally it’s gone. I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s a very busy road and the poor nurses were having to park on another street - the ambulance had to park a long way from the house too. It was hard enough due to Covid restrictions, but this was all added stress.
"It’s such a busy street, with a lot of cars but now at least we have a bit more room to park now.”
Her late husband Michael first called Blackpool Council in October 2020 and was told the car was registered as SORN, meaning it is not allowed to be on a public highway.
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and when he died in December 2021, the grieving widow had a further blow when his hearse couldn’t park outside the house.
Joan said: “It was just so upsetting. I could see they had his photo in the back of the hearse, and I wanted to be able to stop and have a look, but I couldn’t.
"It had to park in the middle of this busy road, with traffic piling up behind us so we had to just make a dash for it.”
It is not clear who moved the vehicle.
Official advice on the Government website states local authorities must remove abandoned vehicles from roads and outdoor spaces.
Earlier this year, airport staff made a last-ditch effort to reunite a car with its owner two years after the vehicle was abandoned.
The blue 2018 reg Suzuki Swift was left at New Plymouth Airport in New Zealand back in March 2020.
The airport's chief executive David Scott even took out an advert in a local newspaper.
His ad in April's edition of the Taranaki Daily News said the car would be towed in “the coming weeks” if the registered owner did not make themselves known.
Someone was reading - but not the owner.
The airport boss said: “It’s been taken by a finance company who had a claim to it – there was outstanding debt on it.”
