Yahoo News Full list of Guildford streets where you're most likely to get a parking fine as £3.5million collected
The streets in Guildford where the most drivers got caught breaking parking and traffic rules have been revealed, with parking tickets doubling in the last financial year.
Guildford Council collected over £3.5million from slapping motorists with penalty charge notices (PCNs) in the last six years, a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request has revealed.
The council responded to an FOI request from the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), which showed Income generated by parking restrictions increased almost two-fold with £467,904 (and counting) being recovered in 2023/24 from £235,133 collected the year before.
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Surrey County Council took responsibility for road traffic enforcement in Guildford in 2023/24. Guildford saw a doubling of penalty charge notices being issued for car parking from just over 9,000 in 2022/23 to nearly 19,000 in 2023/24. Guildford council was in charge of off-street change notices (breaking public car parking restrictions) and on-street charges (breaking road traffic rules) from 2018/19- 2022/23. Between these years a total of over £3.1m was generated.
The council handed out a total of 124,051 penalty charge notices (PCNs) from the financial years 2018/19 to 2023/24. The figure has hiked up from 5,093 PCNs for public car park rule-breaking in 2020/21 to 18,901 PCNs issued by the council in 2023/24.
Explaining why the number of PCNs have sharply increased over the last five years, a Guildford council spokesperson said the period of 2020-21 was significantly affected by the pandemic. as parking charges and parking controls were suspended completely for a number of months to reflect the national emergency. A council spokesperson added: "As usage of our car parks has recovered since the pandemic, so has the number of motorists that do not to comply with the parking fees."
Data provided by the council also revealed the top 7 streets where the most PCNs were handed out between 2018/19- 2023/24 in Guildford. The streets are listed below:
High Street
Bedford Road
Castle Street
Quarry Street
Woodbridge Road
North Street
Millmead
Overall, the council generated £29.2m in revenue from issuing PCNs in Guildford from 2018/19 to 2023/24. A breakdown of the revenue it has collected from issuing PCNs is summarised below:
2018/19: £713,816
2019/20: £760,777
2020/21: £443,347
2021/22: £548,507
2022/23: £651,679
2023/24: £467,904 (income still being recovered for car parking PCNs)
The FOI request also revealed how many PCNs the council issued in Guildford in every financial year since 2018/19. This is set out below:
2018/19: 26,771 PCNs
2019/20: 28,687 PCNs
2020/21: 14,187 PCNs
2021/22: 15,927 PCNs
2022/23: 19,578 PCNs
2023/24: 18,901 PCNs (only car parking PCNs)
All income generated from PCNs goes into the council's parking account, which is required by law to be spent on transport-related projects - including highways improvements and maintenance.
A spokesperson for Guildford Council said. "Our enforcement staff now focus on non-compliance issues solely within our car parks [because on-street parking enforcement is managed by Surrey County Council. This helps to ensure that compliance levels are high and that the car parks are being managed for the benefit of those for whom the facilities are prioritised."
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