Highland Council rakes in £1.5m in parking fines in six years

Highland Council has raked in more than £1.5 million since it started a crackdown on illegal parking six years ago.

The local authority pocketed more than £53,000 in fines in just the first three months of this year, to take the running total since 2016 to £1,587,408.

The council rolled out the Decriminalised Parking Enforcement (DPE) regime six years ago in order to try and stop menace motorists.

The totals each year show the scheme has been bringing in more and more money ever since.

During the pilot year, drivers across the entire Highlands had to fork out £64,254 to pay for badly parked cars – just under what has been netted in three months of 2022 alone.

And this year’s earnings mark an increase of more than £24,000 from over the same period in 2021.

Between January and March 2022 – the most recent figures available for this year – there were 1597 fines handed out in Inverness alone.

In comparison, last year wardens in the Highland capital handed out 812 fines during the same period.

Danielle Boxall, media campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Already over-taxed motorists will be furious at these figures.Parking fines are clearly a lucrative source of income in the Highlands, but households haven’t seen their council tax fall.

“Councils are right to penalise those who deliberately don’t pay, but they mustn’t treat drivers as cash cows.”

According to the figures, a total of £8460 has so far been wiped off this year’s total bill across the Highlands due to charges either being cancelled or written off.

No parking charge notices were handed out during the two months following the first lockdown in March 2020, figures show.

Across the region 9909 fines were issued across the entire Highlands that year.

In comparison, in 2021 the number went up to 11,311.

This coincided with the largest haul of money to the council coffers since the DPE scheme started – £318,355 for the year.

Between January and March this year the council handed out 2496 fines.

This year the town of Nairn had the lowest number of fines for the first three months, with just eight issued up until March.

Dingwall had 16 tickets issued and Wick and Thurso had 59 tickets between the two Caithness towns.

A Highland Council spokeswoman said: “Parking enforcement officers who were previously assigned to Covid response duties are now fully reassigned to parking enforcement.

“Also, with additional officers supporting visitor management across the council, the number of parking enforcement officers available for Inverness patrols has increased in 2022.”

The top five contraventions in 2021:

Parked without a permit 2602

Wrong class of vehicle for bay 2204

Parked in a loading bay 1078

Parked in a permit bay 986

Parked in a disabled bay 744