Motorists in Caithness should be prepared for a parking clampdown this year as Highland Council seeks to deploy permanent patrols in the county.
The local authority’s parking enforcement officers have already dished out 5,125 penalty charge notices in Inverness and Lochaber since the scheme went live on October 24.
But only four of those tickets were handed out in Wick and Thurso by a “roving patrol” which visits once a month for just half a day.
One ticket handed out every 24 minutes under council’s new parking scheme
Yesterday a Highland Council spokesman said: “Full deployment will take place in Caithness during this financial year.”
And the spokeswoman said that the council is considering increasing parking patrols generally across the Highlands, with the level of unlawful parking dictating the frequency of future visits.
In the seven months since the scheme went live, a total of 4,461 drivers have been snared in Inverness and 505 have been caught in Fort William by an 11-strong team who operate daily, mostly from 8am-6pm.
A total £213,450 worth of fines have been raised since the scheme went live. Under the former police traffic warden scheme, the council pulled in just £58,574 in 2015/16 according to a freedom of information request.
The council spokeswoman said that the money generated from the scheme is used to pay staff wages, which fall into the bracket of between £17,053 and £20,298. It also goes towards paying the wages of back office staff – in partnership with Edinburgh City Council – and the IT infrastructure needed to deliver the service.
She added: “Money raised through the issue of Penalty Charge Notices will only be spent on maintaining the service. Any surplus is controlled under statute and can only be used for traffic related projects. It is currently forecast to cost £450,000 per annum to run the service.”
The spokeswoman made clear that there is no incentive for the parking enforcement team to hand out parking tickets.
Bringing the scheme into force involved a cost of about £550,000, £240,000 of which was for physical changes including 160,000 metres of lining and 2,000 road signs.
