Council makes first parking surplus since pandemic

More than £2m surplus was made from pay and display on-street parking in Reading

A local council said it has made a surplus from parking and fines for the first time since the Covid pandemic.

The amount Reading Borough Council has made from parking and enforcing rule-breaking has recovered and is finally making the council money again.

The authority made its greatest surplus of £2.44m from pay and display on-street parking and more than £1.5m was raised by enforcing bus lanes and other moving traffic offences.

The council’s Labour administration said any money made could only be reinvested in other transport-related projects, such as road surfacing and safety measures.

During the pandemic, processing fines for people who overstayed their tickets and those parking illegally caused a net loss for the council of £1.1m.

That figure recovered by £618,419 the year after the pandemic, but still led to a net loss.

Operating the council’s off-street car parks, such as Broad Street Mall and Queens Road, also also led to a net loss of £463,294 in 2021 to 2022.

Parking permits netted the council £748,370 in 2022 to 2023, before a digital permit scheme was introduced. That was on top of the combined surplus of almost £4m from pay and display, bus lanes and other moving traffic offences.

Independent councillor Sarah Hacker said she “always enjoys the report” and called it “really useful statistical information”.

However, she questioned how statistics would change following the approval of the council’s digital residents' parking permit scheme, which went online in November 2023.