Four London Councils Used Taxpayer Money to Pay Staff Parking Fines

Four London councils have used public money to settle parking fines issued to their own staff and contractors, while all four pushed higher penalties for ordinary drivers over the same period. Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show Hackney, Lewisham, Wandsworth and Croydon together paid almost £39,000 in penalty charge notices (PCNs) racked up by council employees and contractors.

None of the four councils volunteered the figures. All four only disclosed them after a Freedom of Information request forced the numbers into the open.

What Each Council Paid

Lewisham recorded the largest total, paying £15,350 across 40 penalty charge notices issued to staff and contractors between May 2024 and December 2025. Over the same window, the council told residents it was “stepping up” its crackdown on abandoned vehicles.

Hackney spent £10,250 on 96 parking and traffic penalties in the 2025-26 financial year, of which £6,060 went to Transport for London and £3,215 to Waltham Forest’s enforcement team, covering fines its own staff picked up while working outside the borough. The council’s head of transport described the figure as a “small fraction” of the penalties issued to the public. Councillor Jacob Cable, Hackney’s cabinet member for climate, clean air, energy and transport, said the council’s drivers are personally responsible for paying PCNs incurred on the job and that 96 percent of the fines in that period were paid by drivers themselves, not the council.

Wandsworth settled £10,040 in staff and contractor PCNs and related penalties between January 2023 and March 2026 using council procurement cards. A council officer told journalists the fines were paid quickly to avoid late payment surcharges, with the council able to recover the cost from the individual driver afterwards if they were found to be at fault. Wandsworth introduced higher London PCN charges last year, describing the move as a deterrent against “dangerous and inconsiderate parking and driving.”

Croydon paid £3,244 in parking fines and vehicle penalties between January 2023 and March 2025, the most recent period the council had figures for. Conservative mayor Jason Perry launched his own crackdown on illegally abandoned vehicles last year, telling residents that “Croydon will no longer be seen as a soft touch or a place where people can commit antisocial acts without consequence.”

The Double Standard

Each of the four authorities has spent the same period telling residents that stricter enforcement and higher fines are necessary to change driver behaviour. Wandsworth raised its PCN charges specifically to deter poor parking. Lewisham announced it was intensifying enforcement against abandoned cars. Croydon’s mayor built a public campaign around ending tolerance for parking and vehicle offences. Hackney called its own enforcement plan “undoubtedly our strongest yet.”

None of that messaging mentioned that the councils’ own vehicles, and the staff and contractors driving them, were racking up penalties that were then paid from council accounts rather than by the individuals who committed the offence, at least in the cases where the council settled the charge directly rather than recovering it afterwards. Wandsworth and Croydon both say they can and do claw back costs from at-fault drivers after the fact, but the initial payment still comes from public funds, and neither council has published figures showing how much of that money is actually recovered.

A member of the public who receives a PCN has no equivalent safety net. The fine falls due immediately, discounted only if paid within 14 days, with no procurement card to soften the blow and no council department absorbing the cost while a dispute is resolved.

How Common Is This

The FOI responses only cover four boroughs, as those are the four that have so far been asked and answered. There is no register showing whether other London boroughs, or councils outside the capital, handle staff and contractor PCNs the same way. Given that all four councils in this batch disclosed broadly similar practices independently of each other, paying first and pursuing recovery from the individual driver only in some cases, it is plausible that the approach is standard practice across local government rather than an isolated quirk of these four authorities.

That makes this a case where a small number of FOI requests have surfaced a pattern that almost certainly extends much further than the councils named so far.

What You Can Do

If you want to know whether your own council pays staff and contractor parking fines from public funds, you can submit a Freedom of Information request directly through the council’s website or via WhatDoTheyKnow.com, which publishes the request and the response so other residents can see it too. Ask specifically for the total value and number of PCNs and traffic penalties paid using council funds over the last three financial years, and whether the council recovers any of that money from the individual driver afterwards.

If you have received a PCN you believe was issued unfairly, whether from a council or from Transport for London, you have the right to make informal representations to the issuing authority first, and to escalate to the independent Traffic Penalty Tribunal or, in London, the London Tribunals service if that fails. Appeals are free, and a formal representation pauses the fine while it is considered.

Councils citing tighter budgets to justify higher parking charges and stricter enforcement against the public might reasonably be asked to apply the same discipline internally, starting with publishing these figures voluntarily rather than waiting for a Freedom of Information request to bring them into view.

How Procurement Cards Work

Wandsworth’s explanation, that fines are settled quickly on a procurement card to avoid late payment penalties and then potentially recovered from the individual afterwards, is common practice across UK local government finance teams, and it is not in itself improper. Councils operate large fleets and employ staff who drive as part of their job, whether visiting residents, checking on building works or moving between offices, and an unpaid PCN can escalate into a much larger debt if it is left to lapse past the 14 day discounted payment window. The issue residents are raising is not the mechanism itself, but the lack of transparency around how often the council actually recovers the money afterwards, versus simply absorbing it as a cost of doing business.

None of the four councils named in the FOI responses published a recovery rate alongside their figures. Wandsworth said it can recover the cost “if a driver was at fault,” which leaves open the possibility that a meaningful share of these fines are never repaid by the individual who incurred them, with the balance falling on general council funds, the same funds raised in part through the parking charges paid by residents and visitors.

The Bigger Number Behind This One

Almost £39,000 is a small sum next to the scale of parking income London boroughs generate each year, which collectively runs into hundreds of millions of pounds annually once surplus from on-street charges, permits and off-street car parks is combined. But the figure is small next to what it reveals about how councils account for their own compliance versus the public’s. A resident who is a single minute late moving their car from a residential bay, or who misjudges a bus lane restriction by a few metres, faces the same fixed penalty regardless of intent. The four councils named here have shown that when their own staff commit the same infringement, the response is considerably softer, at least in the period before the FOI request forced disclosure.

None of the four councils has said whether it plans to publish these figures on a regular basis going forward, rather than waiting for the next Freedom of Information request to force disclosure. Residents in any of the four boroughs, or in any other council area, can ask that question directly of their local authority, and a refusal to commit to routine publication is itself a useful piece of information about how seriously a council treats its own accountability on parking enforcement.

Sources:

• https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/staff-parking-fines-covered-by-taxpayers-money-5Hjddmx_2/
• https://www.gbnews.com/news/london-news-councils-taxpayers-cash-staff-parking-fines-crackdown
• https://www.aol.co.uk/articles/four-london-councils-cover-staff-091045000.html