Council’s £7.8m profit on parking fees and fines
PARKING fees and driving fines funded £7.8m profit for civil parking enforcement at Cardiff council last year.
Drivers paid £5,024,000 in on-street parking fees and £1,186,000 in offstreet parking fees over the last financial year.
Drivers caught incorrectly driving into a bus lane or stopping in a yellow box junction - known as ‘moving traffic’ offences - paid £5,082,000.
The figures were recently published in a report to cabinet on how much the council spent and gained in income between April 2019 and March 2020.
Other income from drivers last year included:
■ £2,230,000 notices
■ £386,000 from residents’ parking permits
■ £366,000 from the parking enforcement camera car
■ £200,000 from the traffic enforcement centre
Overall, the civil parking enforcement took in £14.5m.
While £6.7m was spent on running from penalty charge the parking service and paying traffic wardens, £7.8m will go into a surplus account to be spent elsewhere - like on public transport, new disabled parking spaces, and improving bus lanes and cycle lanes.
The camera car - launched in 2015 and costing £40,000 - patrols Cardiff to check parents are parking correctly outside schools, and to catch drivers using restricted areas like loading areas, taxi ranks, disabled access ranks and bus lanes.
Penalty charge notices cost drivers either £50 or £70, depending on the offence, but are halved if paid within two weeks. Residents’ permits cost £7.50 a year for the first permit and £30 a year for a second permit.
A spokesman for Cardiff council said: “The income funds the operational cost of parking and enforcement, and any surplus or deficit is transferred to a parking reserve account.
“This is used to support public transport, off-street parking and highway improvements, in accordance with Section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984.
“The parking reserve account has helped to support a number of improvements, including installing disabled bays; implementing the new 20mph areas in the city; keeping clear zones by schools, and safe access to school schemes; highway improvements and bus lanes; cycling partnerships; the operation to remove off road bikes from public land; upgrading car parks including pay and display facilities; and ongoing maintenance of the moving traffic offences scheme.”