Getting a parking ticket is the drivers’ equivalent to being fined £170 because you left your railcard at home – and the conductor decided that it was actually their life’s mission to NOT let it slide.
Knowing where in the world you’re more likely to get fined for your parking could save you a few quid next time you think about stopping over that double yellow line for ‘just a moment’. So the people at Claims.co.uk have crunched the numbers to discover which cities in the UK are giving out penalties with carefree abandon.
So where exactly should you park extremely carefully? According to this study, Manchester. Manchester’s parking inspectors love issuing fines so much that there is a rate of almost one per driver on the northern city’s roads – a rate of 99,348 notices per 100,000 people. Between 2020-21, nearly 546,270 fines were delivered, in a city with a population of only 578,500 people.
Brighton, which came in second, wasn’t much better, with 98,583 charges per 100,000 people. After that, the penalty rates in Claims.co.uk’s study aren’t so tough: Reading, Cambridgeshire, and Nottingham close out the top five, each with more reasonable rates.
So where are you least likely to get a fine? Well, that’d be in Hyndburn, in Lancashire, where only 56 fines are given out per 100,000 drivers. The stuff of dreams.
Claims, the body responsible for the research, also noted that rural areas seemed to rank comparatively lower than built up centres, which they say could be due to a lack of need for parking enforcement infrastructure outside of urban areas. There’s also likely to be a correlation between the number of parking enforcement officers employed and likelihood of getting a fine, which wasn’t taken into account in the study.
Basically, when in Manchester; stick to the car parks. Or just take the tram.
Manchester in the news
Mannie’s been in Time Out’s newsfeed quite a bit in recent weeks. Not only might the northwest English city soon get a cool new market hall, but it’s also been found to have some of the worst air quality in the country. It ain’t all bad news though: the best cocktail bar in the UK is also apparently in Manchester.
Did you see that this cool new market hall could be coming to Manchester?
Plus: Discover which UK city is getting a night bus service.
Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out UK newsletter for the latest UK news and the best stuff happening across the country.