Parking pays dividends for the Council

Parking arrangements in our towns and cities are not designed to be fund raising activities but to minimise adverse impact of parking on traffic movement and to prioritise parking for residents and local businesses. Why then do local authorities make significant financial surpluses from parking fines? In 2012/13 Islington raised over £25 mln in parking fines from 199,000 tickets. Of this £10mln related to 144,000 Parking Charge Notices (fines) and expended £18 mln on management, enforcement and collection to give a surplus of over £6.6 mln and over the last five years Islington totalled £29.6mln or has averaged £5mln p.a. surplus.

Politicians will obfuscate and imply that that any surplus is only used to maintain the parking regime itself. But this is not true. According to the Islington Council website its parking objectives are:

· ensure our roads are safe

· enable traffic to flow freely

· give residents and local businesses priority over commuters

· provide parking for disabled people and health care workers

· ensure that the parking rules are enforced fairly.

However it goes on to say that

“In addition to keeping Islington moving, any surplus generated from managing parking is used to pay for street related repairs and improvements”.

Clearly a small surplus, or deficit, year on year is inevitable and the legislation does allow a surplus to be put towards road maintenance and safety. A small surplus will also avoid any further burden the Council’s already overstretched finances. But £6mln is not trivial; it is a significant contribution to the Council’s total revenues. Only incompetence could not have anticipate it and as I have no wish to accuse the Council’s finance department of incompetence we must assume that the surplus was by design.

The 2012/13 Parking Services report states that the surplus was spent as follows:

Road safety £250,000
Transport planning £726,000
Highway improvements – Capital Expenditure £2,724,000
Traffic and Engineering - Capital Charges £2,958,000

Of course this is hokum, as these are statutory responsibilities which would have been carried out whether there was a surplus on the parking account or not. And where those fines are paid by Islington residents or business than they constitute an additional tax on living in the borough.

So how much of this additional tax do you think is paid by local residents and businesses going about their normal day-to-day activities? It is not so simple as to say that car owners are likely to be financially better off, since a great many people on very ordinary incomes need cars and vans to get to work or to carry on their trades. That, is a good question and subject of a question to the Council. It will be interesting to see the outcome.