Scots due £445k by foreign drivers 31 | 12 | 2010
FOREIGN DRIVERS have cost Edinburgh City Council hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost revenue from parking tickets over the past two years. Why? Simply because the council hasn't been able to trace them!
The council — not exactly in a position where it can afford to lose large sums of cash in the wake of the trams nightmare — has written-off £445,045, the amount owed by visitors to the city between April 2008 and October 2010.
Along with cities including London, Portsmouth and Newcastle, Edinburgh was among the areas with the highest value of tickets written off. The information was obtained under a Freedom of Information request and highlighted the amounts uncollected by 20 cities in the UK.
A spokeswoman for Edinburgh city council said that parking tickets to foreign-registered vehicles worth £233,993.70 were written off in the 2008-9 financial year. Parking tickets to the value of £211,051 issued to foreign-registered vehicles were written off between April 2009 and October this year after drivers could not be traced.
"There are a number of reasons why a parking ticket could be written off," a council spokeswoman said. "It could be because the driver cannot be traced. It could also be because signs or road markings were missing, or it could be because the parking attendant made a mistake during the ticket issue."
In Strathclyde, only 254 parking tickets for foreign-registered vehicles were unpaid with a value of £7560. These were written off between January 2008 and December 10 this year.
While it's easy to criticise the various councils for their lack of efficiency, the main problem can be traced back to Brussels and the EC's lack of a transparent, Europe-wide agreement to share information on drivers.
It's a situation which was further highlighted by Jackson Carlaw, Conservative MSP and the party's transport spokesman, who called for greater co-operation with other countries to track down the fine-dodgers.
"Many people will be angry that all these fines go unpaid," Mr Carlaw said, "when this is money which could be used to make our roads safer. If any sensible scheme can be devised with other countries which forces these fines to be paid, then they should be considered."
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news by following us on twitter.com/scotcars
Jim McGill