ERYC Make £916K Profit From Parking & Penalty Notices

Councils in England have made record profits from parking charges and penalty notices according to a report conducted by the RAC Foundation.

Locally East Riding of Yorkshire Council made a profit of £916K while Hull City Council made a profit of £2.1m during the period of 2014 to 2015.

While revenues earned by the council here East Riding may seem high, it was the councils in London who profited the most. Westminster £46.6m, Kensington and Chelsea £33m and Camden £24.5m all topping the list.

The RAC are now calling for councils to reveal just how they will spend the profits that have been generated, which nationally, represent 4pc increase on the previous year.

However, the Local Government Association said the report was inaccurate but the RAC raised fears local authorities are put on the more financial pressure, they will start to use funds generated from parking for other projects say the temptation must be intense.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC charity said;

“The financial sums involved in local authority parking are huge and the overall profit’s eye-watering.”

“The legal position is that parking charges are to be used as a tool for managing traffic. However, with local government budgets under ever-greater pressure, the temptation to see them as a fund raiser must be intense.”

Any concerns of the RAC raised about local authorities using parking charges to generate profit were rejected by the LGA. They insist councils are on the same side as motorists they said;

“The reality is income is spent on running parking services, and any surplus is only spent on essential transport projects, such as tackling the £12bn roads repair backlog and creating new parking spaces.”

“Councils are on the side of hard-pressed motorists. The average motorist is paying 30 times more to Whitehall in charges and taxation each year than they do to their town hall through parking.”

Locally here in Beverley parking charges have been suspended at weekends in the run-up to Christmas, a scheme that has now be running for six years in the town.

Parking charges in Beverley have always been a popular topic of locals with many feeling that some sort of free but restricted parking schemes should be put in place to try to attract more shoppers into the town centre.