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High earner: the CCTV camera at Theobald’s Road and Southampton Row |
Camera grabs £7,000 a day in driving fines
Motorists only have themselves to blame, says chief
THIS is the most profitable CCTV camera in Camden.
Leading to the issue of 26,764 fines – for parking and driving offences in 2006 – the camera will have netted the council up to £7,000 a day, if people have failed to pay their £50 fee within 14 days. The rate then shoots up to £100 and at that rate, the figure for the year works out at just below £2.7 million.
The camera, based at the junction of Theobald’s Road and Southampton Row, is just one of a collection of 11, operated by Camden Council and Transport for London.
All the cameras at the junction issue fines – almost certainly making it Camden’s parking fines capital.
The figure, released to the New Journal under the Freedom of Information Act, is likely to wind up drivers, as is news that traffic fines have gone up since last year.
In the year to March 2007 Camden made £43.8 million from motorists, but by March it was yet to spend more than £19 million of that total.
It is obliged to reinvest the money made from motorists on road improvements.
In 2005-6 Camden made £39 million.
But Councillor Mike Greene, Camden’s parking chief, said if motorists were grumbling, it was likely they only had themselves to blame.
He said: “There are quite a number of people who just don’t seem to learn. There are probably not very many who are caught out doing something accidental.”
And he celebrated the reduction in parking fines that his administration has achieved.
A parking report, published in July, shows 13,000 fewer charges were issued, although it still made up around four fifths of the overall number of fines sent out – just under 560,000.
Last year motorist action groups were so fed up with Bloomsbury’s penalty blackspot they branded it “Big Brother” and listed it in their top five most hated places to drive. |
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