Parking tickets and fines rake in £1.5m profit for council

Car ticketed in Lower Penn Street car park

Over a five year period Rochdale Borough Council has made a profit of just under one and a half million pounds from parking fines.

In the last financial year, between 2014 and 2015, the Council raked in £324,000 profit.

Local councils throughout England generated a combined 'profit' of £693 million from day to day, on and off street parking operations between 2014 and 2015.

The figures are calculated by taking income from parking charges and penalty notices, then deducting running costs.

The data, analysed for the RAC Foundation by transport consultant David Leibling, comes from the statutory annual returns that councils make to the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “The financial sums involved in local authority parking are huge and the overall profits eye-watering. And once again the year-on-year direction of travel is upwards.

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

“When a parking profit is made the law states that, essentially, the money can only be spent on transport and environment projects. We are simply asking that all councils publish annual reports to tell drivers exactly where this huge excess ends up.

“The precarious financial state of many councils is a genuine concern, not least when it comes to the risk of a cut in road maintenance spending which will hit every one of us. A funding solution requires national and local government to look beyond the High Street parking meter.”

RMBC profit from parking fines

2010/11 £453,000
2011/12 £623,000
2012/13 £156,000
2013/14 -£66,000
2014/15 £324,000