subject: Parking Fines [print this page] Parking Fines Parking Fines
Local councils and authorities outside London are campaigning to the council to increase the fines imposed for parking offences. Currently there is an upper limit of seventy pounds on any fines outside the capital, but towns and constituencies want this lifted to one hundred and twenty pounds, so that fines are equal across the county.
The British parking association agrees with these calls, as they feel that the current seventy pound limit is not enough of a deterrent for drivers. Critics feel that the move is an attempt to increase revenue, and the idea is in breach of government guidelines. After all, we have enough money worries with rising Car Insurance costs.
Currently, car parking charges are set by local councils, but the government imposes a top level that can e charged. Most councils do impose the highest limit when a motorist is in breach of the parking rules.
Motorists have seen parking charges jump over the last five years, and now councils are seeing a rise of seven hundred percent in the amount of illegal parking tickets issued, due to the fact that the cost of parking for a day isn't that much cheaper than the ticket. This means that motorists are trying a parking roulette, as sometimes they won't get a ticket and will get away with an expensive day of parking.
Norman Baker, the transport minister, said: "I think motorists will worry that this is perhaps a covert attempt to raise money from them unfairly. That's not the Department for Transport's objective in any shape or form.
"What we are doing is looking very objectively and very fairly at the evidence presented to us by the councils on the one hand and the British Parking Association on the other hand."
