Monday May 02, 2005
SKY
BRIGHTON TOPS CAR-NAGE
Motorists heading to Brighton should beware where they leave their car, after figures showed it heads Britain's parking ticket table.
According to the RAC, the Sussex town sees the highest number of tickets issued outside London, with a total of 161,194 tickets issued in Brighton and Hove in 2003.
The second worst area for tickets was Birmingham, with 147,994 handed out.
The motoring group said 7.1 million penalty charge notices for illegal parking were issued across Britain in 2003. This was equivalent to one every five seconds, or more than 19,000 a day.
RAC spokesman Philip Hale said: "Parking tickets already raise nearly £1bn a year. With these figures, it's all too easy for motorists to see themselves as a soft target.
"We need to see an end to incentives for wardens, to make sure parking enforcement is focused on safety and congestion, not revenue."
RAC top 10 parking ticket hotspots outside London in 2003:
1 Brighton and Hove - 161,194
2 Birmingham - 147,994
3 Manchester - 123,584
4 Liverpool - 114,466
5 Nottingham - 91,816
6 Reading - 61,639
7 Oxfordshire - 60,399
8 Milton Keynes - 56,156
9 Medway - 52,739
10 Luton - 45,928
