There are four areas that the Isle of Wight council generate parking income from and VB has seen the number for last year.
In the year 2009-10, the largest amount was taken by the parking ticket machines.
The year saw these machines across the Island taking £2.358 million.
Parking permits
We’re all aware of changes in the Isle of Wight parking permits that caused so much anger a few months back. Over the latest year, these parking permits have generated £828,000.
Lots of Parking tickets
The total received from parking tickets (or Penalty Charge Notices as they’re officially known) was £814,000 last year.
If parking tickets are priced at £25 and paid at that level (assuming the amount doesn’t increased due to lack of payment), that means that over 32,000 parking tickets were issued on the Island over the year. Dividing this number over a year leads to over 87 tickets being issues a day.
What it was spent on
Laws restrict how this money can be spent by the council, so it has to be spent on highways; public transport infrastructure and environmental improvements in the local area.
As an idea of what the money actually went to over 2009-10 think replacing street lights; concessionary fares and subsidised bus services; and “traffic management improvements.”
Summary
To give you the full overview, here’s the numbers …
All parking-related income – £4.05m
Money spent – £2.319m
Money left over – £1.731m
We’re not sure what happens to this £1.7m surplus, so we’ll ask the council and update you when we hear.
UPDATE 2.Aug.2010: We’ve had an answer on this today, but have asked for some more detail as it wasn’t completely clear.
UPDATE 4.Aug.2010: IWC sent us through a response early yesterday, providing more details.
The ‘Money spent’ (£2.319m) went on parking related expenditure including new parking meters, maintenance of the same, collecting the money from them, paying traffic wardens, staff training, sign maintenance, lighting maintenance, car park maintenance, permit administration, court proceedings, etc.
The £1.731m we labelled as ‘Money left over’ was “reinvested into highways and transport, supporting areas such as road maintenance and street light repairs.” All of this money was spent.
Image: Alaskan Dude under CC BY 2.0
