Lambeth parking warden rakes in estimated £1m in one year (From Streatham Guardian)

Lambeth parking warden rakes in estimated £1m in one year

8:00am Thursday 28th January 2010

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A Lambeth parking warden dished out a whopping 9,141 tickets in one year - an estimated five an hour.

The staggering statistic emerges as the Streatham Guardian can also reveal the Lambeth street where the most driving fines were handed out last year - 15,481, or more than 40 a day.

The revelations follow a Freedom of Information request, which showed 247,650 penalty charge notices (PCNs) were issued between November 1, 2008 and October 31 last year by Lambeth's parking service.

Lambeth's most prolific warden slapped motorists with 2,000 more tickets than any of the 268 other wardens who worked that year.

The warden's rate of five an hour is based on a 37.5 hour week, with four weeks holiday a year. If it each motorist paid a £120 maximum fine, this equates more than £1m a year.

Lambeth Council has said its civil enforcement officers (CEOs) are not given incentives to issue tickets, and those who issue more PCNs tend to be the ones patrolling busier areas where there is more illegal parking. The council also issued 50,000 less tickets last year.

But the borough's most effective enforcement tool is not a warden, but a camera on Clapham Park Road that caught more than 15,000 motorists driving in the bus lane during the 12 month period.

The top 10 fine hotspots all involve cameras. Rushcroft Road in Brixton is where the most parking tickets (2,556) were handed out.

The council recently admitted it would have to stop issuing fines for cars driving in the bus lane – which has made more than £400,000 per year in the past six years - because it was inadequately signposted.

A spokeswoman for motoring watchdog the RAC Foundation said the council should review all the points in the borough where it found it was issuing a lot of tickets.

She said: "Councils need to work with motorists to reduce the number of tickets. Often when many fines are given there can be errors with signage or how the traffic system works."

She said it was important for a parking service to ensure safe roads and flowing traffic, but council's needed to be working towards "100 per cent compliance" when no tickets were issued, rather than seeing giving out tickets as the only solution.

A Lambeth Council spokesman said out of context statistics could "paint a misleading picture". He said the ticket numbers should be looked at in the context of both the accuracy of the CEOs - 98 per cent in the last six months - and the percentage of drivers obeying the rules, 99.4 per cent.

He said the statistics showed wardens were focused on accurately issuing tickets to vehicles which were illegally parked, and only a tiny majority of drivers were breaking the law, meaning the rest benefit from clear streets and availability of parking spaces.

He said: "We are certainly not being over zealous – rather we are delivering a complex and important public service extremely effectively to the benefit of the vast majority of Lambeth residents, business and visitors.”

Is your road one of the most ticketed? Click here to find out

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