Councils’ parking goldmine

Greedy councils are striking gold by raking in millions of pounds a year in parking fees... while motorists still
can’t find a space to leave their car!

English authorities pulled in a huge £1.275billion in the past 12 months, the latest Government figures reveal. The cash came from parking meters, fines, car parks and residents’ permit schemes.

Our league table (right) shows the country’s top 10 high-earners were mostly London boroughs – which made more money than nearly all the big cities.

Birmingham was the only exception, raising £18.8m and making it into ninth place. But it still didn’t come close to Westminster at the top of the charts – it collected a whopping £93.2m.

That was cut to £38.3m after costs, although a spokesman for the authority insisted: “Councils don’t make a profit from parking.” He argued the money “goes straight back into transport”.

But clearly not into funding for more parking spaces, if a new study by Accident Exchange is anything to go by. It claims motorists have never had so much trouble finding a free spot to leave their vehicle – with 35 million drivers now competing for a mere 2.2 million spaces. And the result is more parked car crashes than ever – as our main story in this week’s Troubleshooter reveals.

Not all authorities were as ‘successful’ as Westminster, though. After deducting costs such as wardens’ salaries, Ealing Borough Council ended up making a loss of £2.3million, while Norfolk was left £2million in the red.