Nine Kent Councils collect £3.5 million in Penalty Charge Notices

Between August 2019 and July 2020, according to data collected through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests by Compare the Market, Medway Council has issued the most Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) and raised the most income and Sevenoaks the least.

Not all Councils responded to the FoI request made.

Dan Hutson, the head of motor at Compare the Market, said parking fines were a “cash cow for many local authorities”.

David Renard, a transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said:

• “Income raised through on-street parking charges and parking fines is spent on running parking services. Any surplus is spent on essential transport projects, including fixing potholes and tackling congestion, but it would take more than a decade and £10bn to tackle our current roads repair backlog.”

Not all Councils responded to the FoI request made.

Five Councils failed to respond to the requests made by Compare the Market. They are:

• Ashford

• Dover

• Folkestone & Hythe

• Swale

• Tonbridge & Malling

With regards Folkestone & Hythe  NOT responding to FoIs, we note on What Do they Know, an FoI sent in by a resident of the district on 25 May 2020, is still unanswered, even though on 17 November the Council stated:

Due to an internal error with our systems, the data required to formulate our response was corrupted, so isn’t something which we could access.

We believe that our Systems Team have been able to find a fix, so have requested that they have the data over to us as soon as possible.

Once we have access we will formulate our response and send this over to yourself imminently.

Imminently means “very soon”. However, the requestor has waited a further two months with NO response. Suprising! No.

As it has taken seven and half months without a response, we expect Compare the Market will be waiting for a response from Folkestone & Hythe until the back end of this year.

And let’s not forget the man in charge of FoI is Cabinet Member and Betrayer of Princes Parade, Cllr Ray Field.

The Shepway Vox Team

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