Councils Made Almost £1.1 Billion From Parking Last Year, New Analysis Shows

Councils in England made a combined surplus of almost £1.1 billion from their parking activities in the 2024-25 financial year, according to new analysis of official figures. The scale of that profit, and the fact that most drivers have no easy way to check where the money actually goes, raises a question few local authorities are keen to answer in detail: is parking income really being spent the way the law requires?

The analysis, based on returns from 295 of England’s 317 local authorities to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, found combined income from on-street and off-street parking of £2.163 billion, against expenditure of £1.07 billion. That leaves a surplus of £1.094 billion, all of it collected from drivers through parking charges, permits and penalty charge notices.

Westminster Leads a Widening Gap

Westminster Council generated the largest profit of any local authority, at £90.6 million, up 19.3 per cent on the £75.9 million it made the previous year. That single council’s parking surplus is now larger than the total annual budget of many smaller local authorities, and the year-on-year jump shows no sign of the trend slowing. Behind Westminster sit dozens of other councils, from major cities to smaller boroughs, each running parking operations that generate more income than they cost to run.

The gap between what different councils make from parking is stark. Some authorities barely break even once staffing, enforcement and maintenance costs are accounted for, while others treat their car parks and on-street bays as a significant and growing source of revenue. For drivers, that means the size of a fine or the cost of a permit can vary sharply depending on which side of a council boundary they happen to park on, with little relationship to the actual cost of providing the parking space.

Where the Law Says the Money Should Go

Councils are not free to spend parking surplus however they choose. Under the Road Traffic Act, any surplus from on-street parking charges and penalty income must be ring-fenced and spent only on transport-related purposes, which can include highway maintenance, public transport subsidies, road safety schemes and environmental improvements connected to travel. Off-street parking surplus, from council-run car parks, is generally treated more flexibly and can in some circumstances support wider council budgets, but on-street income carries the strictest legal restriction.

In practice, checking whether a council is meeting that requirement is not simple. Parking accounts are published annually, but the format and level of detail vary enormously between authorities, and few drivers ever look for them. Some councils have separately faced criticism for how they handle parking income and their own staff’s fines, adding to the sense that transparency around parking money is inconsistent at best.

Appeals Rarely Change the Outcome

The surplus figures sit alongside a separate pattern in how councils handle challenges to individual fines. Analysis of appeal data has shown that councils frequently do not contest tickets they go on to lose at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, meaning many drivers who pay a penalty charge notice without challenging it could be handing over money for a fine that would not have survived an independent review. With parking income now running at over £2 billion a year nationally, the incentive for councils to issue notices first and deal with challenges later is difficult to ignore.

Five Years of Rising Profit

The 2024-25 total continues a run of consecutive increases. Councils made a combined profit of £884 million from parking in 2022-23, which rose to £1.019 billion in 2023-24, on income of £2.008 billion against costs of £989 million. London alone generated 55 per cent of that 2023-24 surplus, with Westminster’s £75.9 million share equal to more than 7 per cent of the entire national total on its own. Councils had actually budgeted for an even larger £1.12 billion surplus in 2024-25, meaning the final £1.094 billion figure came in slightly below target, but still marks the fourth consecutive year of growth in parking profit nationally.

That trajectory is worth watching: parking charges and fines are one of the few council income streams that can be increased without a public vote or a referendum, unlike council tax. Every percentage point added to a tariff, or every extra camera enforcing a bus lane or box junction, feeds directly into a surplus that is growing faster than council budgets overall.

Private Parking Firms Add Another Layer

Council-issued penalty charge notices are only part of the money flowing from drivers into parking enforcement. Private parking operators, who answer to a different set of rules than councils, have separately come under regulatory pressure over how they issue and pursue charges. Between council penalty income and private parking charges, the total amount collected from UK drivers for parking each year runs into billions of pounds, most of it with limited public visibility over where it ends up.

How to Fight Back

• Request your council’s parking account. Local authorities are required to publish an annual breakdown of parking income and spending. If you cannot find it online, ask for it directly or submit a Freedom of Information request.
• Check whether on-street surplus is going where the law says it should. Ask your council specifically how on-street parking surplus was spent in the last financial year, and whether it went on transport-related projects as required.
• Always challenge a penalty charge notice you believe is wrong. Appeals to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal are free, independent of the council, and a meaningful share of tickets that reach appeal are overturned.
• Report suspected misuse to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. If you believe a council is not spending parking surplus as required by law, the ombudsman can investigate complaints about council conduct.
• Compare permit and charge costs before assuming a fine is fair. Councils set their own tariffs, and there is no requirement that charges reflect the actual cost of providing a parking space.
• Watch tariffs at budget time. Councils typically review parking charges annually alongside their wider budget. If your local authority is already running a large surplus, a proposed increase is worth questioning at a public consultation rather than accepting as inevitable.
• Ask your local councillor directly. Councillors sit on the committees that approve parking budgets and spending plans, and a direct question from a constituent about how surplus is allocated is a matter of public record they are expected to answer.

Drivers in London face the sharpest version of this problem, as more than half of the national surplus is generated within the capital. A resident of an outer London borough paying to park outside their own home is, in effect, contributing to one of the largest single revenue streams any local authority in the country controls, often with only a general sense of where that money goes once it leaves their bank account.

Outside London, the split between councils is more uneven still. A council with a small town centre and a handful of pay-and-display car parks could make only a modest surplus, while a neighbouring authority with an extensive bus lane camera network or an aggressive residential permit scheme can generate a far larger one from a population of a comparable size. Two drivers living twenty miles apart, both parking legally most of the time, can end up funding very different sized council income streams purely down to where their local boundary happens to fall.

None of this means every parking charge is unfair or every council is mismanaging the money. Parking enforcement funds real maintenance and safety work in many areas. The issue is transparency: a surplus approaching £1.1 billion a year, collected from millions of individual drivers a few pounds at a time, deserves the same scrutiny as any other billion-pound public income stream, and right now most drivers have no practical way of knowing whether their own council is spending its share as the law requires.

Sources:

• RAC Foundation, Council parking revenue in England 2024-25
• RAC Foundation, English council parking report 2024-25 (PDF)
• Traffic Penalty Tribunal