Conservative councils in London – which potentially incudes Croydon’s Tory Mayor Jason Perry – wanted to hike the cost of parking tickets to £180 a pop.
Stung: fines for bad parking and other offences are about to increase to a maximum of £160 in Croydon
That’s according to a report by the London Standard, as the capital seeks to resolve the scourge of pavement parking and anti-social driving with the first increase in Penalty Charge Notice fines in 15 years.
Croydon, unlike many other outer London boroughs and some inner city councils, operates as a “Band A” PCN area across the whole borough, and under a scheme that has been agreed by the London Councils organisation, parking and other motoring fines will increase from £130 to £160. These will apply to serious offences, such as parking on yellow lines or causing an obstruction.
Lower level charges – which tend to be imposed when drivers overstay the amount of time they have paid to park in a car park or in an on-street parking bay – will increase from £80 to £110 in Croydon.
In all cases, drivers who pay within 14 days will continue to receive a 50%.
Fines imposed for parking in bus lanes and for “moving traffic” offences – such as stopping within a yellow box junction or making a banned turn – will also increase from £130 to £160.
The changes will bring the highest level fines in line with Transport for London’s £160 fines for parking on a red route or in a bus lane.
The first increase in fines since 2010, some councils relate that their costs of policing parking offences have risen by nearly 60% in that time. London Councils also made the case for the need to increase PCN charges to create more of a deterrent to “anti-social and obstructive parking”.
The proposals have the approval of London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, and now have to be agreed by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.
One of the biggest issues mentioned by people who responded to a London Councils consultation was the amount of parking on pavements that went unpunished.
In the zone: Croydon is unusual among outer London boroughs in being all subject to the Band A higher rate of parking fines
A record 8.3million parking fines were issued across London in 2023-2024 – generating millions in income for boroughs. In a survey of Londoners, half of respondents were concerned about the level of dangerous and inconsiderate parking, with the largest single group highlighting parking on pavements as an issue.
London Councils said that any revenue from the fines had to be used for transport schemes, typically paying for the cost of the Freedom Pass that provides free public transport for older and disabled Londoners and which costs £350million a year.
But some councils – including Croydon – pushed for even higher fines, the newspaper reports. “The Standard was told that last December, when London Councils’ transport and environment committee considered the proposed increases, LibDem and Tory councillors sought to move all 33 boroughs into the ‘Band A’ charging band and to increase the highest fine to £180.”
The councils pushing for higher parking fines – Conservative authorities such as Bromley, Bexley and Croydon – were among those who had campaigned against extending the ULEZ zone to outer London.
The paper reports that the proposal for higher parking fines was blocked by the majority of Labour council representatives in the group, settling on the £160 maximum fine as the consensus.
Last year, cancelling penalty charge notices for more than 3,000 people because of an “admin error” cost Croydon £150,000, according to the council. Although Mayor Perry and the council issued an apology for their cock-up, Inside Croydon has been receiving reports from readers that similar errors – where a final demand is issued when no initial PCN notice is sent out – has been happening again.
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Part-time Perry’s Parking Plan claims “Our enforcement efforts will be “intelligence led”, striking a balance between achieving an acceptable standard of compliance and being robust and responsive to local problems and concerns.”
Ah, that old cliché, “striking a balance”.
There’s very little parking enforcement evident in the town centre.
Take a walk down Church Street in Croydon, and look at the cars and vans illegally parked on the pavements there and on nearby Frith Street. Then check out the cluster of vehicles parked on the double yellow lines on Old Palace Road. Then if you’re feeling adventurous, admire the piss takers on Derby Road and on London Road, between West Croydon station and Lidl.
You won’t see an acceptable standard of compliance by any stretch of the imagination, let alone signs of being robust.
There’s not much point in jacking up the fine for being a four-wheeled moron if the council’s parking wardens can’t or won’t ticket miscreants
Our understanding is that there’s no more than four traffic wardens currently working the whole of Croydon.
Piss-poor Perry’s just waiting for the cash to roll in from PCNs issued automatically by CCTV. He couldn’t give a stuff for how pedestrians, mums with pushchairs and the public generally are adversely affected by pavement parking and dangerous driving on pavements.
Employ wardens, to make Croydon better, and collect money as a byproduct. Why not more?