Highway robbery!

Councils make £110k prof it EVERY DAY from drivers in parking charges and f ines

DRIVERS are being treated as ‘cash cows’ by councils who made more than £40 million profit from parking charges and fines last year – almost £110,000 every day.

Income far outstrips the schemes’ running costs, a Transport Scotland report shows.

Edinburgh made the most money last year – £5.6 million from fines and £23.5 million from pay and display charges. With expenditure of only £8.3 million, it recorded a £20.8 million profit.

Glasgow recorded £18 million parking income, according to its own council papers, with almost £6.5 million expenditure, resulting in a profit of more than £11.5 million.

Of 16 councils that enforce their own parking schemes, 11 made a combined profit of £40.6 million. The remaining five lost £1 million between them.

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Small charges are sometimes necessary to manage our roads, but motorists sometimes feel like they are being used as cash cows.

‘There are already sky-high taxes on fuel, and for owning a car, so it’s important that excessive parking charges do not heap even more misery onto hard-pressed taxpayers.’

Miles Briggs, Conservative MSP for Lothian, said: ‘It is remarkable that drivers in Edinburgh and Glasgow are paying tens of millions of pounds in parking fines and pay and display charges. While we do need to monitor parking, the current system is clearly too stringent.’

Scottish Government guidance for councils is that parking schemes should be ‘self-financing’.

The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 states that any profits should be used only to offset losses in the previous four years – or to fund transport projects, such as road repairs and public transport schemes. That has allowed cash-strapped local authorities to ease pressure on other parts of their budgets, by using parking revenues to fund transport costs.

City of Edinburgh Council chiefs insist the money raised by parking charges and fines is needed to ‘keep the city moving’.

Transport and environment convener Lesley Macinnes said: ‘It’s essential that we keep the city moving while maintaining safety and accessibility for all road users.

‘All funds from parking income are reinvested in road maintenance and transport infrastructure.’

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: ‘Any surplus generated from parking activities is ploughed back into providing and maintaining transport-related projects.’

A Transport Scotland spokesman said: ‘The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 makes it clear that any surplus accrued by a local authority under the DPE [decriminalised parking enforcement] regime must be used only for certain transport-related provisions or road improvement provisions.’