Westminster Greed

Like many riders first going into london after the parking charge was brought in I was caught out by not realising I had to pay.

On returning to my bike I found the brightly coloured plastic ticket cover, which at first I thought was a some sort of freebie,how wrong can you be.So I then decided to send a freedom of information request to Westminster council asking,how many tickets have been issued to motorcycles since the scheme started and what was the total revenue raised.

I recieved a reply which was staggering even by Westminster standards. From August 4th to December 5th they issued 21293 pcn’s of this total 4997 have been cancelled. 10514 have been paid bringing a total of £502,516 in revenue. This equates to a fraction over 173 tickets issued a day. If the cancelled tickets are removed from the total, basing calculations on the paid tickets,assuming all the remaining ones are paid they could expect in the region of £765,000.

Surely enough to provide decent security and road surface, try putting a side stand down in Portman square. I think this shows where their priorities lie.