Ten Redbridge roads make £2.5million in parking tickets in 12 months

The 10 Redbridge roads where most parking tickets were issued

Amanda Nunn Monday, August 6, 2012
8:00 AM

Four in five parking tickets issued during the last year were on just 10 roads around the borough.

A total of 54,523 parking tickets were issued, which at a minimum of £60 a ticket, equates to more than £3.2million.

From these, 44,301 were issued on ten streets making up more than £2.5m of the total.

The impact the high number of tickets is having on business around the borough is a concern to Luigi Meola who owns Luigi’s Restaurant in Beehive lane, just off Cranbrook Road, Ilford.

Mr Meola, 51, said: “We cannot even unload outside our business. All of our staff have had parking tickets. It’s unbelievable the way the parking ticket system is working.”

He has owned the restaurant for 21 years and says he has seen an increase in tickets which has reduced the number of people eating at his business.

“On a Sunday we lost a lot of customers who don’t come for lunch, you used to be able to park along Valentines Park and now it’s really bad around this area,” he added. “I’ve had four tickets when parked on single yellow lines.”

Topping the list was Cranbrook Road which passes through Ilford and Gants Hill, with 9,122 tickets in the last 12 months.

If all of these were paid on time this would have earned Redbridge Council £547,320.

Clements Road and High Road, Ilford took the second and third spot for the highest number of tickets with 8,140 and 5,703 respectively.

Steven Derbyshire, a pastor at the City Gates Church in Clements Road, said: “It really is quite disturbing. At one time Sunday’s and bank holidays were free [to park] now you get charged for that as well.”

Clementswood Cllr Zulfi Hussain said: “If it hurts the flow of traffic then they should not be parking on the yellow lines.

“We need to look into these figures, we don’t want drivers to suffer but we need to educate them to use the car parks.”