£30,000 in parking fines is lost
9:21am Monday 3rd January 2011 in Your Town
MISTAKES by traffic wardens and untraceable foreign drivers have combined to cost Bolton Council more than £30,000 in parking fines in the last two years.
Parking chiefs have been forced to write off 549 penalty charge notices (PCN) because the DVLA did not have records of the number plates on the tickets issued.
This was either because they were foreign-registered vehicles or traffic wardens had taken down the number plates incorrectly.
But the number of tickets written off represents less than one per cent of the total number of fines issued over the same period.
A council spokesman said: “The penalty charge notices can be written off for different reasons.
“Sometimes it is because it is a foreign number plate, and sometimes it is because the number plate has been recorded incorrectly on the penalty charge notice.”
Wardens issued 31,512 PCNs in 2008/09 and 28,244 in 2009/10 — a total of around 60,000. Revenue generated in 2008/09 was £887,072. Last year, £924,944 was collected from motorists, of which £76,065 was classed as “surplus”
— which means it cost £848,879 to enforce parking.
Drivers issued with a PCN must currently pay £60 but are offered a £30 charge if they pay within 14 days of being booked.
The 549 PCNs written off could have earned the council between £16,470 and a maximum of £32,940 — if each ticket was said to be worth £60.
The spokesman added: “All the money we accumulate in fines goes back into traffic schemes and improving the service Bolton Council offers.”
Fewer tickets were issued last year because a private firm is now responsible for Bolton’s surface level car parks. However, revenue went up because another private firm is now enforcing the costlier on-street fines for the council.
Bill Blakemore, director of the SPARKS Network, an association of public authorities that campaigns for more effective cross-border traffic enforcement, said: “Local authorities will carry on losing money and struggle to enforce parking tickets against foreign-registered vehicles until the Government sets up working arrangements with other European countries to share ownership data.”
Cllr John Walsh, leader of the local Conservative party, said: “Lost fines because of incorrect registration numbers is down to carelessness, and parking companies and contractors should meet that cost.
“Foreign drivers are a national problem. There is enough red tape in Europe but this area is neglected, we need a system.”
