Welsh councils collect more than £12m from parking fines in a year

Welsh councils collected more than £12 million from parking fines over a 12-month period, according to figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

Authorities that responded to the investigation received a combined £12,246,551 from penalty charge notices (PCNs) – equivalent to around £33,552 a day or £23 every minute.

A total of 418,353 PCNs were issued by the six councils included in the figures.

Cardiff accounted for by far the largest share, collecting almost £8.74m and issuing 312,148 penalty notices during the reporting period.

That means the capital was responsible for more than 71% of all the parking fine revenue recorded by the investigation and almost three-quarters of the PCNs issued.

Swansea recorded the second-highest total, collecting £2.54m from 72,979 penalty notices.

There was a substantial gap between the two cities, with Cardiff collecting more than three times as much as Swansea.

The remaining four councils included in the investigation – Gwynedd, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Monmouthshire – collected £965,531 between them.

The figures were compiled by Fast Loan UK following Freedom of Information requests to Welsh local authorities. The company is a short-term lender operated by JDB Enterprise Group Ltd and authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The results show considerable differences in the level of parking enforcement between the authorities included, although factors such as population, traffic levels, tourism and the availability and regulation of parking differ significantly between council areas.

Cardiff alone accounted for 74.6% of the penalty notices in the figures, while its £8.74m represented around 71.4% of the total amount collected.

Across all six authorities, the £12.25m collected works out at approximately £1,398 an hour and £23.30 a minute.

The figures relate only to councils which responded to the Freedom of Information investigation and therefore do not represent the total amount collected from parking penalties by all 22 Welsh local authorities.