A fine spot to park! A look at ticket hotspots
THE parts of Carmarthenshire where you are most likely to receive a parking fine have been revealed. Details show almost 10,000 parking tickets were dished out across the county last year, earning the council more than £360,000.
The figures were obtained by the Journal after a Freedom of Information request was sent to Carmarthenshire Council asking for statistics to be made available covering the whole of 2021.
John Street car park in the centre of Carmarthen was revealed as the spot where drivers are most likely to receive a parking fine, followed by street parking in Lammas Street, also in Carmarthen town centre.
Of the 10 worst spots to pick up a fine, five of them are in Carmarthen, four of them are in Llanelli, and one is in Llandeilo. Across the year as a whole, 9,904 penalty charge notices were handed to drivers in Carmarthenshire, racking up a total of £361,440 in income for the county council.
The fines dished out are a combination of those issued by traffic wardens who patrol the county’s streets and car parks and those issued by post after parking offences were recorded by the council’s traffic camera enforcement vehicle. That vehicle, called Iolo Patrolo, was introduced in 2019 and has two cameras on its roof, one pointing left and one pointing right. It records evidence which is then reviewed by council officers who, if a parking offence is confirmed, issue a fine to the driver.
The system, including the car, the cameras and the accompanying software, cost the council around £55,000, a cost it recouped in the first year of the vehicle being on the road.
Between April 2019 (a few weeks after the car was active) and April 2020, £80,002 in fines were paid to the council by members of the public penalised by the use of the camera enforcement system.
The council has not revealed how much of the £361,440 in parking fines it collected last year was specifically down to the enforcement vehicle, only that it was in combination with manual tickets being issued by wardens on patrol.
While the figure may seem high to some, other parts of Wales – albeit larger areas – have dished out many more tickets and collected more income as a result of people’s wayward parking techniques.
In one 12-month period, Swansea Council issued 21,247 tickets and made £664,611 in fines. One street alone was the scene of 1,501 tickets, resulting in a fines total of almost £40,000.
In Cardiff, meanwhile, more than 52,000 fines were issued in 2021, with the council making more than £1.6 million in the process.
As for Carmarthenshire, the locations where you are most likely to pick up a parking ticket, based on figures from 2021, are:
■ John Street car park, Carmarthen
■ Lammas Street, Carmarthen
■ Lane to the rear of Vaughan Street, Llanelli
■ St Peters car park, Carmarthen
■ East Gate car park, Llanelli
■ Chapel Street, Carmarthen
■ Rhosmaen Street, Llandeilo
■ Church Street car park, Llanelli
■ Cowell Street, Llanelli
■ Lammas Street car park, Carmarthen
Carmarthenshire Council has been asked to comment on what the money raised by fines goes towards, but the authority had not responded to that request at the time of going to press. The council has reminded people, however, that periods of free parking are available across the county.
In Carmarthen drivers are allowed to park for free on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 3.30pm and 6pm in short stay car parks.
In Llanelli, people can park for free on Mondays and Tuesdays between 10am and 4pm, again in short-stay car parks, while in Llandeilo and Ammanford the offer applies Monday to Wednesday between 10am and 2pm.