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Dundee owed almost £1 million in unpaid parking fines

A parking ticket on a car in Dundee.
A parking ticket on a car in Dundee.

Parking fine dodgers in Dundee owe the city council alomst £1 million.

Incredibly, one car has been ticketed no fewer than 116 times an estimated total fine of more than £10,000.

Now council bosses say they want to get tough on drivers who cheat the system and the taxpayer by ducking their fines.

A spokesman for Dundee City Council said: ”We will use every legal means open to us to recover this money from unpaid fines. We are currently looking at changing the way we pursue outstanding debts from unpaid parking fines.”

A request under freedom of information rules revealed that the total owed in unpaid fines in Dundee comes to £985,080.

Tickets handed out in the city initially impose a £60 penalty but this is reduced to £30 if the bill is paid quickly. But the fine rises to £90 if the ticket is ignored.

Cash from parking fees and fines is used by councils to help balance budgets and is seen as an important source of income.

Up to now, Dundee City Council has used sheriff officers to try to reclaim the debt. However, it is understood council officials now want to bring debt recovery ”in-house” and back into city council control, to allow non-payers to be targeted directly.

The authority has previously sequestered the vehicles of those who have ignored the penalty notices and taken their owners through the courts. But it can be tough to track those who try to beat the system because the log books of offending cars are often not properly registered to a keeper’s address.

It is a different picture in Angus, where unpaid fines total just £2,160. Car parking there is free, meaning tickets are only issued for parking improperly outside marked bays or in dangerous spots.

Only 72 tickets are outstanding in the county, with the most prolific offender racking up four unpaid tickets.

In Perth and Kinross, £345,738 is outstanding from 4,632 tickets. One vehicle has received 37 tickets, or parking control notices, with 25 outstanding and a sum of £2,110 still due.

Figures have shown that around one in three people who appeal a parking fine are successful. Of the 20,000 issued in Dundee during 2010, there were 4,300 appeals and 1,300 drivers had their tickets torn up.