Plans to replace baffling Parking signs have been scrapped - for being too confusing.

Many motorists do not know they are entitled to park in about 100 parking bays in Brighton and Hove because of poorly-worded notices.

Council officials planned to spend £4,000 on replacements but the project has been abandoned because a simple solution could not be found.

The problem, which has led to motorists being wrongly fined, centres on bays reserved for voucher parking.

Residents who have a valid resident's or trader's permit for that area are legally allowed to leave their vehicles in these spaces at certain times. But that fact is not displayed on signs.

Taxi driver Mark O'Hara, 40, was among those who got a ticket for legally parking on a voucher bay in Buckingham Street, Brighton.

He knew he could leave his car in the bay because he lives nearby and had displayed his valid resident's permit.

Mr O'Hara said: "I discovered by chance regulations allowed me to park on voucher bays on Saturdays in the area I had my permit for.

"So I was angry when I got a ticket for parking there on a Saturday after working all night but I was even more angry when they told they were letting me off on this occasion only.

"They are just moving the goalposts all the time. How can they say they are letting me off on this occasion when their own regulations say I am entitled to park there? I am a taxi driver and I always obey parking and road traffic laws."

To solve the problem, the council designed signs with the correct information but parking officers realised they would never be approved by the Department of Transport.

A spokeswoman for the authority said: "We know the voucher bays system is somewhat confusing but we hope to find an answer to the problem in our central Brighton parking review next year.

"The reason we haven't changed the signs is that every sign needs to be approved by the Department of Transport and the rules concerning the voucher bays and residents' parking are fairly involved, which would make for a large, complicated sign that almost certainly would not be approved."

Steve Percy, of the People's Parking Protest, said: "The reason we set up the People's Parking was to draw attention to these anomalies in the parking regulations.

"There must be an awful lot of people who have been given tickets wrongly. If the signs are too big to be changed then I can't see why they can't put up a secondary sign."