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August 1st, 2013 • 1 Comment
By Mof Gimmers
http://www.bitterwallet.com/rac-chid...=Yahoo%21+Mail
Councils rake in millions from parking fines and the RAC aren’t happy about it, sneerin that authorities are onto a “nice little earner”. The 359 town halls across England have a total current account surplus of £565m thanks to them.
The RAC found that, of the ten biggest surpluses, eight were in London, with Westminster creaming a £41.6m profit.
This comes on the back of the government playing with the idea of a ‘grace period’, where motorists can park on double yellow lines for 15 mins, although, how you’d police that, no-one knows.
These surplus figures also arrive a matter of days after a judge declared that Barnet Council had acted illegally in setting parking charges to raise revenue.
RAC Foundation director Professor Stephen Glaister said: “For many local authorities, parking charges are a nice little earner, especially in London. Not all authorities make big sums. Several run a current account deficit and indeed of those with surpluses many will see the money vanish when capital expenditure is taken into account.”
“But the bottom line is that hundreds of millions of pounds are being contributed annually to council coffers through parking charges .”
The top 10 earners are as follows:
1. Westminster £41.6 million
2. Kensington & Chelsea £28.1 million
3. Camden (north London) £25.0 million
4. Hammersmith and Fulham (west London) £19.5 million
5. Wandsworth (south west London) £16.1 million
6. Brighton and Hove £14.4 million
7. Islington (north London) £10.9 million
8. Cornwall £7.9 million
9. Newham (east London) £7.3 million
10. Hounslow (west London) £7.3 million
By Mof Gimmers
http://www.bitterwallet.com/rac-chid...=Yahoo%21+Mail
Councils rake in millions from parking fines and the RAC aren’t happy about it, sneerin that authorities are onto a “nice little earner”. The 359 town halls across England have a total current account surplus of £565m thanks to them.The RAC found that, of the ten biggest surpluses, eight were in London, with Westminster creaming a £41.6m profit.
This comes on the back of the government playing with the idea of a ‘grace period’, where motorists can park on double yellow lines for 15 mins, although, how you’d police that, no-one knows.
These surplus figures also arrive a matter of days after a judge declared that Barnet Council had acted illegally in setting parking charges to raise revenue.
RAC Foundation director Professor Stephen Glaister said: “For many local authorities, parking charges are a nice little earner, especially in London. Not all authorities make big sums. Several run a current account deficit and indeed of those with surpluses many will see the money vanish when capital expenditure is taken into account.”
“But the bottom line is that hundreds of millions of pounds are being contributed annually to council coffers through parking charges .”
The top 10 earners are as follows:
1. Westminster £41.6 million
2. Kensington & Chelsea £28.1 million
3. Camden (north London) £25.0 million
4. Hammersmith and Fulham (west London) £19.5 million
5. Wandsworth (south west London) £16.1 million
6. Brighton and Hove £14.4 million
7. Islington (north London) £10.9 million
8. Cornwall £7.9 million
9. Newham (east London) £7.3 million
10. Hounslow (west London) £7.3 million
