Chichester’s top spot for parking fines revealed

The council issued a total of 8,415 penalty charge notices to motorists between August 2019 to July 2020 – an average of 23 fines per day, data obtained by comparethemarket.com shows.

Northgate car park was the top spot for tickets, with more issued at this location than anywhere else.

Figures show the average fine given was for £35.39 – just below the average parking fine across the UK, which was found to be £37.

On average, councils across the country are issuing 63 parking fines a day, comparethemarket.com found.

Dan Hutson, head of motor at comparethemarket.com said: “Up and down the country drivers are regularly being caught out by tight parking restrictions.

“With the third lockdown now in place, we would encourage drivers to take extra care and attention when parking up their car to ensure they avoid a parking fine.”

Chichester District Council said: “We undertake parking enforcement in our car parks and on-street (on behalf of West Sussex County Council) in accordance with the Traffic Management Act 2004.

“Parking enforcement is designed to increase compliance with parking restrictions.

“Raising revenue is not the objective of civil parking enforcement, and no targets are set for either the amount of revenue generated through Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) or the number of PCNs issued.

“The purpose of PCNs is to dissuade motorists from breaking parking restrictions.

“There are a number of costs associated with providing a parking enforcement service.

“Any surplus generated from PCNs which are issued on-street has to be spent on transport-related initiatives, in accordance with the Road Traffic Regulations.

“If there is a surplus relating to the income in car parks from PCNs, there is no restriction in terms of how this can be spent, and any surplus would be used to support key services within the authority.”