Parking tickets used to boost council coffers
This article reveals. “In the first evidence that local authorities are exploiting motorists to raise cash, Westminster council has identified parking enforcement as a source of millions of pounds of “additional income”.Motoring groups seized on the admission, buried in a briefing by the council’s director of finance, and accused councils of using parking controls as a “stealth tax”.”
Now I’m not against taking the rap when I do something wrong, but when I worked in Local Government I always felt slightly ashamed of those Council’s that have
crossed the line of, whilst not deliberately issuing tickets for revenue reasons, certainly coming to rely significantly on car park fines and even car park income more generally. It seemed to me somehow demeaning that, something as important as a local authority, was forced to rely on these things as an income strategy.
The hard faced element of my character reflects that in view of the severe limits placed on the real discretion of authorities to raise their own revenues and take a whole number of service issues “by the horns” it is not surprising that it has come to this in a number of places.
It does worry me though, when authorities are constantly seen as enforcers and nit pickers, rather than acknowledged for the good and visionary things they do in many places – often because of restrictions to their discretion, on a shoestring.