Credit: Rachel Banning-Lover
More than £3 million was raised from parking fines issued across Hackney in 2013, according to the Hackney Post’s estimates.
A Freedom of Information request made to Hackney Council revealed that they handed out 82,633 Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) for parking violations during the calendar year.
Hackney’s most expensive road
Among the PCNs distributed, more notices were issued to drivers on Chatsworth Road than on any other street in Hackney.
The council gave out 2,259 penalty notices on the road in Lower Clapton, making it the riskiest place to park in the borough, with the council raising at least an estimated £80,000 from parking fines on this one road alone.
This figure was calculated based on the lowest fine a driver can pay for a PCN: £40 for a lower level notice paid within 14 days, to take into account both people paying above this rate and successful appeals to the council.
Many drivers caught on CCTV
One reason for the large number of PCNs on Chatsworth road, according to residents, is a series of CCTV cameras installed on top of several pedestrian crossings along the road that are used for issuing tickets.
Alex Ratcliffe, who runs Cooper and Wolf coffee shop on the road, said that the free parking in the area leads to the road getting overpacked with cars quickly.
“I myself got caught out by one of the new CCTV cameras they’ve installed – I’d parked in a loading bay further up the road to pick up a friend’s artwork for the shop.
“I was there for loading and I have a resident’s parking permit for the area too but I had to pay £60.
Seven other streets across Hackney also accrued more than 1,000 tickets over the calendar year – with Mare Street, Bradbury Street, Hoxton Square, Clissold Road, St Mark’s Rise, Hoxton Street and Amhurst Street all becoming ticket traps.
July was the month in which most notices were handed out with council parking officers issuing 7,761 PCNs.
Drivers leaving their vehicles parked illegally between 11am-12pm were also twice as likely to get issued a notice than drivers at 2pm, and three times more likely than drivers at 6pm.
Only 11 tickets were issued between midnight and 6am throughout the whole year.
The most common offence was leaving a vehicle parked in a residents’ parking place or zone without either clearly displaying a valid permit or ticket, or without payment of the parking charge. These made up over 40 per cent of the PCNs issued over the year.
Bad for business
Rushil Patel, owner of Ishi Express convenience store, on Chatsworth Road, said his business had lost a lot of money due to the council’s restrictive parking policies.
“We get so many tickets for unloading goods outside of our shop, and we also lose a lot of customers because they’d rather not pick up one item and get a parking ticket. The camera on the pedestrian crossing is directly across from our shop.
“I know they want to protect the people but there must be other ways.”
Hackney Council took £5,982,910 in income from PCNs and bailiffs for the 2012-2013 financial year, according to Hackney Council’s annual parking report. For that period, only 1.3 per cent of 104,832 PCNs were appealed, 66 per cent of which were refused.
Hackney issued fewer PCNs than its neighbouring boroughs during the last financial year, with Newham, Haringey, and Islington all issuing over 190,000. Tower Hamlets issued 117,000.
Councillor Feryal Demirci, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, said: “Hackney Council’s parking contract sets no targets for the issue of penalty charge notices and restrictions exist only where there is a clear need.
“The council’s surplus last year from penalty charge notices was used to help cover the cost of concessionary travel for older and disabled residents, into which Hackney invested £11.2 million in total.”
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