Most prolific parking ticket areas in Shropshire revealed
More than 48,000 parking tickets have been issued to motorists in Shropshire in the last three years, council figures have revealed.
One car park alone saw more than 1,000 yellow tickets slapped on vehicles between October 2017 and October 2020, according to a log of all penalty charge notices (PCNs) handed out by Shropshire Council enforcement officers.
Most of the PCNs were for on-street parking offences, though just over 10,000 were issued to vehicles left in car parks.
The most ticketed location was Listley Street North Car Park in Bridgnorth, with 1,030 fines issued during the three-year period.
It means the 91-space car park saw more tickets handed out than even the county’s largest car park, Frankwell in Shrewsbury.
High Street in Bridgnorth is also shown to be the most ticketed stretch of road in the county, racking up close to 2,000 PCNs in the last three years.
In Shrewsbury, 1,028 tickets were issued to vehicles parked in Frankwell Main, Quay and Riverside car parks.
Meanwhile 832 tickets were handed out in Bridge Street Car Park, 738 at St Austin’s Street and 518 at St Julian’s Friars.
The town’s most ticketed streets include St Mary’s Place, Castle Street, Mardol, High Street, Shoplatch and Claremont Street.
In Ludlow, Castle Street Car Park saw 899 tickets issued, along with 278 in Galdeford (Upper) and 115 in Galdeford (Lower).
The streets in Ludlow in which most PCNs were issued were Mill Street, Castle Street and Broad Street.
Festival Square Car Park was the location most off-street PCNs were issued in Oswestry, though the figures do not include tickets issued in car parks owned by the town council (Central, the Horsemarket and Smithfield Street).
Willow Street was the town’s most ticketed road, followed by Church Street and Beatrice Street.
The logs also reveal the most common reason behind the issuing of PCNs, with 8,848 down to parking in a restricted street during the prescribed hours.
There were more than 7,000 incidents of vehicles being left on street longer than the maximum permitted time, 6,500 cases of vehicles abusing loading bays, and 3,500 vehicles parked in disabled bays without displaying a blue badge.
In the county’s car parks, nearly 7,000 tickets were issued to motorists who left their vehicles without paying, or without clearly displaying a ticket, while a further 2,500 were handed out to those who left their cars longer than the time paid for.
Some parts of Shropshire did not see a single PCN given out during the three-year period.
Bishop’s Castle and Clun car parks are free to park in, though no tickets at all were issued in the towns for things like parking in disabled spaces or outside of bay markings.
This year Shropshire Council suspended parking charges at all car parks from March 28 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. On-street charges remained in place, and car park charges were reintroduced on June 1 in some locations and July 14 in others.
No parking tickets were issues anywhere in the county from the day the country went into lockdown on March 23 until May 6.
