Dundee City Council is losing nearly £1000 a month in parking fines that cannot be collected because the cars are registered abroad.
A spokesman for the city council revealed that around £11,000 in fines went uncollected in 2009/10 because they belonged to foreign drivers down from £13,500 the year before.
Fife Council has also had to write off thousands of pounds worth of fines in recent months.
The local authority has had to write off parking tickets worth more than £2500 because the cars belonged to foreign drivers it has emerged.
A total of 89 tickets to foreign-registered vehicles were written off between April 2008 and October 26 this year because the owners could not be traced.
The local authority said most tickets were issued in St Andrews which attracts more tourists because of the Old Course.
A spokesman said, “St Andrews in Fife has a higher rate of offences, and foreign drivers, due to the world-famous Old Links Golf Course.”
Fife Police said no money has been written off or is still outstanding in relation to any foreign-registered vehicles over the same time period.
However, the money written off by both Dundee City and Fife Councils is small change compared to some other local authorities in the UK.
Westminster City Council wrote off 45,437 tickets between July 2007 and October this year.
In total £3.08 million worth of tickets has already been written off while another £3.2 million is still outstanding.
Edinburgh City Council said parking tickets to foreign-registered vehicles worth £233,993.70 were written off in the 2008/09 financial year.
The council’s parking operations department also said £211,051 in parking tickets issued to foreign-registered vehicles was written off between April 2009 and October 1 this year after drivers could not be traced and tickets were not paid.
A spokeswoman said, “There are a number of reasons why a parking ticket could be written off.
“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.”
Bill Blakemore, director of the SPARKS Network, an association of public authorities that campaigns for more effective cross-border traffic enforcement, said the UK Government needed to set up working arrangements with other European countries to share ownership data.
A Dundee City Council spokesman said, “The British Parking Association, of which the council is a member, is lobbying for better co-operation across borders.”