Parking firms claim record £½bn in fines

PARKING firms issued a record half a billion pounds’ worth of fines in the last half of 2022 alone – a jump of almost 25 per cent.

Some 5,644,020 fines were handed out from July to December last year, data shows, up from 4,554,378 over the same period the year before – an increase of 1.1million.

Motorists were hit with 8,320,399 tickets in the first nine months of 2022-23 – not far off the 8,564,764 for all of 2021-22.

With fines capped at £100, it means parking firms are on track to issue demands for more than £1billion in fines by the end of this year. The figures are for car parks run by private firms not councils.

It comes after the Government withdrew key parts of a long-awaited code of practice aimed at protecting drivers from ‘cowboy’ operators.

Ministers caved in after parking firms launched a judicial review of the proposals.

Steve Gooding, from the RAC Foundation, said: ‘There’s widespread agreement that the Government should be setting up a regulatory framework for the industry. These numbers surely suggest that what’s needed is action.’