Hundreds of parking fines going unpaid in Renfrewshire each year

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Hundreds of parking fines are going unpaid in Renfrewshire each year — sparking calls for the council to review its policy.The local authority handed out 3,759 tickets last year but 521 were not settled by the driver, figures have revealed.It means the council could be missing out on as much as £31,260 for 2021-22 alone.Unpaid fines have been a long running problem for the council, with 216 outstanding in 2020-21, on top of 1,034 in 2019-20, 1,583 in 2018-19 and 1,166 in 2017-18.Councillor Chris Gilmour, the Labour group's spokesperson for environment and infrastructure, believes an official inquiry should be conducted to get to the bottom of the situation.He said: "I think the council should carry out a review of their enforcement, or non-enforcement shall we say, to understand why it's happening and what we can do to improve that situation.Don't miss the latest headlines from around Renfrewshire.

Sign up to our newsletters here. "Some might be impossible to enforce, but others we might be able to enforce and we need to understand, is it a lack of enforcement officers, are the courts jammed up, where are we?"Is it a lack of boots on the ground, is it a lack of staff?

It opens up a whole cornucopia of ideas once you scratch the surface."The data, which was disclosed following a Freedom of Information request, showed, in addition to the 3,759 in 2021-22, there were 1,246 tickets issued in total in 2020-21, 5,191 in 2019-20, 6,946 in 2018-19 and 6,823 in 2017-18.A raft of fines are also overturned each year, including 147 in the last year, 42 in 2020-21, 187 in 2019-20, 626 in 2018-19 and 382 in 2017-18.Councillor Gilmour