Peterborough City Council makes £2 million parking profit in 2015/16

The council made £2.2 million during the financial year, up from £2.045 million in 2014/15.

The figures have been revealed by the RAC Foundation which discovered that the 353 local authorities in England generated a combined profit of £756 million from their on and off-street parking activities over a 12 month period.

The city council was 86th on the list for profit made, while £6 million was made from parking in Cambridge.

The figures are calculated by taking income from parking charges and penalty notices and then deducting running costs.

Although not all individual councils made a large surplus on their parking activities, just 49 (14 per cent) reported negative numbers.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “These numbers might seem eye-wateringly large, but in part they reflect the growing competition for space in many of our towns and cities.

“In 1995 there were only 21.4 million cars on Britain’s roads, today there are 30.7 million.

“Parking charges are one of the tools councils use to keep traffic moving whilst also allowing people reasonable and affordable access to high street shops and other facilities.

“The good news is that any profit generated by councils from on-street parking must by law be spent on transport-related activities, and as every motorist knows there’s no shortage of work that needs doing.”

Once again the largest surpluses were seen in London with the 33 London boroughs making £332 million between them – 44 per cent of the English total.

Westminster had the largest surplus in England (£55.9 million) followed by Kensington & Chelsea (£34.2 million) and Camden (£25.2 million).

The biggest profits outside of London were reported by Brighton & Hove (£20.1 million) followed by Nottingham (£13.6 million) and Milton Keynes (£10.8 million).

A spokesman for Peterborough City Council said: “Any surplus from car parking in the city has to be reinvested into traffic related projects. This has helped to maintain the standard of our car parks, including the recent resurfacing work at the Car Haven and the works to the market multi-storey car park.

“The money also contributes to the maintenance of safety standards in our car parks which is demonstrated by our continued retention of the nationally recognised Safe Park Mark. The majority of our car parks have also received accreditation from Disabled Motoring UK.

“We believe we offer good value with all day charges of £3 or less at three city centre car parks. Evening parking in our car parks remains a flat charge of £1.50 and on-street parking is free from 6.30pm. Alongside this we have not increased the cost of resident or visitor permits since 2009.”