Insurance
Drivers hit with £30m in parking fines every month
British motorists are being hit with more than £30m each month in parking fines, figures reveal.
Councils are issuing more tickets than last year and there has been a significant spike in the number issued on Sundays, according to the data obtained by LV= car insurance.
The figures, uncovered by a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, show councils have handed out over 890,000 a month this year – up 4% on 2012 figures.
LV= calculated that based on an average amount of £42 per ticket and excluding any successful appeals, drivers are now paying out over £30min parking fines every month.
Over 284,000 tickets were issued by parking wardens on Sundays between January and May this year – up 13% on the same period last year.
The report found that so far this year, the busiest parking wardens were in the City of Westminster handing out an average of 1,269 parking fines every day.
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Outside of London, Birmingham City Council came next handing out 339 a day and Bristol City Council the next busiest issuing 271 per day.
At the other end of the scale, motorists in the Moray Council area received the fewest parking tickets averaging less than one ticket a day – 113 in just six months.
A separate survey of 2,000 motorists found the main reasons people got tickets were staying too long (28%), leaving their car somewhere they thought they would not need a ticket (25%) or forgetting to display a ticket (6%).
A common complaint among motorists was that signs explaining the parking restrictions were often difficult to locate (11%), difficult to understand (9%) and the road markings are often confusing (8%).
John O’Roarke, managing director of LV= car insurance, said: “Parking rules vary in each council area and it is easy to get caught out when you don’t know the restrictions.
“Getting a ticket can be very expensive and often take months to reverse. Parking on a Sunday is becoming increasingly difficult and it’s easy to get caught out if you don’t know the local rules. If in doubt, check the sign explaining the parking restrictions and if you are still unsure try to park somewhere else.”