Watford Borough Council owed £150,000 in unpaid parking fines

5:00pm Wednesday 6th February 2013 in News Photograph of the Author By Mike Wright, Chief Reporter

Council writes off £150,000 in unpaid parking fines Council writes off £150,000 in unpaid parking fines

Around £150,000 worth of parking fines issued in Watford last year are outstanding or have been written off as enforcement officers could not track down the offending motorists.

In contrast only £14,000 worth of fines are outstanding or written off in Three Rivers from last year and £68,000 in Dacorum, which use the same parking contractor as Watford.

Watford Borough Council officers said they have since switched the bailiff company in a bid to collect on more fines handed out to motorists.

The figures emerged last night as councillors on Watford’s outsourced services scrutiny committee looked into the borough’s 10-year contract with its parking company Vinci.

Although Vinci issues the penalty notice, the collection is handled by the councils themselves.

Politicians on the panel queried the high cost of fines not collected by Watford compared to neighbouring boroughs.

Steve Rackett, Green councillor for Callowland, said: "The write-offs are around 15 per cent and I have done a rough work out and that’s around £100,000 in value. When you compare it with Dacorum, which has a similar number theirs was much smaller, around £50,000.

"It seems quite high compared to our neighbouring boroughs."

Justin Bloomfield, Watford Borough Council’s parking services manager, said unlike neighbouring boroughs Watford was a large retail centre and also had regular football matches with enforced parking.

As a result he said a higher number of fines were handed out to drivers not from the borough who were harder for officers to track down.

He said: "We are dealing with people that often had no intention of paying the penalty charge from the beginning".

Mr Bloomfield added that the council had ended its contract with its previous bailiff company and hired two new ones which would compete and both had more presence in neighbouring London boroughs.

Figures released by the council show 19,806 parking fines were handed to drivers in the town in the 2011-12 financial year, with 3,636 issued in Three Rives and 16,844 in Dacorum.

Fines for the three boroughs are £50 or £70 for worse parking offences. However motorists get a 50 per cent discount if they pay within a fortnight.

The total number of parking fines issued in Watford last year amounted to just over £1,241,000.

Taking the £50 basic fine the figures show at least £181,800 worth of fines were issued in Three Rivers and £842,200 in Dacorum.

Figures from Watford showed last year showed just under £90,000 of fines had been written off last year as the motorists were deemed untraceable.

Just under £60,000 are still unpaid. The council writes off fines if they are not paid within 12 months.

In Three Rivers 74 per cent were paid, 18 per cent cancelled and 8 per cent written off or outstanding, whereas in Dacorum 62 per cent were paid, 30 per cent were cancelled and 8 per cent written off or outstanding.

Mr Bloomfield said all money made from parking was ring-fenced and could only be used to fund and the maintenance and improvement of the service.

Comments(18)

gusgreen says...
5:53pm Wed 6 Feb 13

Not acceptable!!
Must do better £150000 is too much to write off. But what more would you expect it only money which could keep the CPZ fees down for Watford residents and they aren't important.

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John Howard Norfolk says...
6:28pm Wed 6 Feb 13

Can someone say how much it costs Watford BC to administer the parking payments (and non-payments)?
The point I am making here is to work out whether we would be better off having FREE parking?

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erewegoagain says...
6:47pm Wed 6 Feb 13

and what are the council doing with the The total number of parking fines issued in Watford last year amounted to just over £1,241,000.????????
???

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Nascot says...
7:35pm Wed 6 Feb 13

BTW - CPZ permit fees are going up this year,

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E.Coli says...
8:18pm Wed 6 Feb 13

erewegoagain wrote:
and what are the council doing with the The total number of parking fines issued in Watford last year amounted to just over £1,241,000.????????

???
I'm sure it is being spent wisely

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MarsLander says...
8:38pm Wed 6 Feb 13

E.Coli wrote:
erewegoagain wrote:
and what are the council doing with the The total number of parking fines issued in Watford last year amounted to just over £1,241,000.????????


???
I'm sure it is being spent wisely
I think you accidentally put "wisely" on the end of an otherwise wise comment

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Steve Rackett says...
9:26pm Wed 6 Feb 13

John Howard Norfolk wrote:
Can someone say how much it costs Watford BC to administer the parking payments (and non-payments)?
The point I am making here is to work out whether we would be better off having FREE parking?
John, and others, you can find the 2011/12 report on parking services here:

http://watford.moder
ngov.co.uk/documents
/s4276/Annual%20Park
ing%20Report%202011-
12.pdf

And the overall budget figures are on page 10. As you'll see, the £1.21m income also includes permits (£221k) and pay and display (£461k)

Councillor Steve Rackett

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Mohandas says...
9:58pm Wed 6 Feb 13

I wonder how many motorists would like to see a higher cancellation rate similar to Dacorum's 30%? It seems you are dammed if you go all out to collect and dammed if you don't. Perhaps residents often wonder is whether parking schemes is fair or in some places too restrictive across the town and which areas get hammered the most to pay for other areas.

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Skidder1066 says...
6:25am Thu 7 Feb 13

This is money that the Council hasnt lost, as it wasnt there to begin with!! It is monry they MIGHt have got if they hadnt paid, at the end of the day,no-one has died,no-one has been injured,no extra money has been spent as the traffic wardens were out getting other motorists booked..............
..it is all headline news.

If the money had been lent to someone and they hadnt paid it back, then that is news, but it isnt, and those that pay the fine,good,those that dont,unlucky, there will always be losers and winners, have's and have nots in life, live with it and concentrate on more important things.

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MarsLander says...
8:10am Thu 7 Feb 13

All this extra money coming in, will the council now give out free or much reduced price parking permits?

I believe the council has raked in enough extra cash in 2012 to allow them to not charge for parking permits.

This would be a test of whether the council does things for their residents or whether parking is just another cash cow for the council.

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John Howard Norfolk says...
9:10am Thu 7 Feb 13

Steve Rackett's figures are interesting - a sizeable chunk of the parking income is paid voluntarily for permits and fees.I imagine that the administration costs for collecting these are modest.
However I am still wondering whether the costs of levying penalties and trying to collect frm unwilling car owners is so disproportionate that it might be worth considering some free parking?

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Mike Watford says...
9:29am Thu 7 Feb 13

I think the council have been quite explicit that the parking service doesn't 'make money' - but covers its costs for the residents parking schemes that residents want.

If you have 'free parking' availaable to all in many terraced town centre streets or near teh football club/stations,for example, you'd never be able to park as a resident.

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garston tony says...
10:14am Thu 7 Feb 13

I know a firm that have a presence nationwide who for a sliding scale percentage (depending on the size of the debt) will pursue debtors for money owed. We're talking smaller sums here so the percentage they would retain would be on the lower scale but even if it was 20% the council if they used such a firm would gain a potential extra £120k.

The difficulty the council say is tracking these people down, but that process is no different to if they are in borough or out. Its the enforcement that is different but using such a firm as above would greatly improve their success

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MarsLander says...
10:42am Thu 7 Feb 13

Mike Watford wrote:
I think the council have been quite explicit that the parking service doesn't 'make money' - but covers its costs for the residents parking schemes that residents want.

If you have 'free parking' availaable to all in many terraced town centre streets or near teh football club/stations,for example, you'd never be able to park as a resident.
You can dish out the parking permits for free can't you?

Where does the interest go on the parking money? Back into the parking fund or into council funds?

Parking is a cash cow for councils. Now it's a bigger cash cow than ever before.

I see the council are also getting in on the litter cash cow as well, another easy source of extra taxes on the people of Watford. No warnings, just fines. After all, it's a matter of principle, and that principle is money.

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Andrew1963 says...
12:00pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Mike Watford wrote:
I think the council have been quite explicit that the parking service doesn't 'make money' - but covers its costs for the residents parking schemes that residents want.

If you have 'free parking' availaable to all in many terraced town centre streets or near teh football club/stations,for example, you'd never be able to park as a resident.
The original parking scheme area does make money - thats how the council is able to fund new schemes, like the Cassiobury zone, which contributes very little income in comparison.

If you look at the councils accounts you will see that £ millions of surpluses have built up over the last 10 years.

After about 17.30 the enforcement virtually stops. Except on football evenings.

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TRT says...
12:22pm Thu 7 Feb 13

The lack of enforcement for parking out of hours is one thing that they do need to address. We've already seen how overparking in one street meant firefighters had to leave their appliance at the end of the road and run down to an incident carrying hand-held extinguishers and running extra-long hoses. I had to do a reversing manoeuvre just to turn into Queens Road from Radlett Road a couple of weeks ago because someone had parked actually on the roundabout, and there was a taxi cab parked on the other corner. The police were called... nothing was done because the council took over parking responsibility and it wasn't a complete obstruction of the road.

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Nascot says...
1:05pm Thu 7 Feb 13

MarsLander wrote:
All this extra money coming in, will the council now give out free or much reduced price parking permits? I believe the council has raked in enough extra cash in 2012 to allow them to not charge for parking permits. This would be a test of whether the council does things for their residents or whether parking is just another cash cow for the council.
Refer to my earlier post. They are going up!

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MarsLander says...
2:29pm Thu 7 Feb 13

I'm not at all surprised.

Can the council justify this? Surely it can't be right to just keep adding to parking reserves for the sake of it, or will they use it to make more roads non-parking so they can increase fines and parking charges?

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