Half of parking tickets paid too late for a £10 discount

The rise was approved as figures emerged to show that fewer than half of the people who get a parking ticket fail to pay it within seven days to get a £10 discount off their fine.

The parking ticket fine has gone up from £40 to £65 after 32 deputies backed a proposal in the States last week.

Last year a total of 15,392 fixed penalty notices were issued, up slightly on the year before.

But only 7,298 (47%) of those tickets were paid within seven days, down from 8,331 previously. Tickets paid within seven days received a £10 discount.

North Beach users spoken to by the Guernsey Press all agreed that the ticket rise was too much, especially with the impact of the cost of living.

Husain Ahmed said it was ‘not really fair’, adding that it would hit low earners who may have made a ‘small mistake’ hard.

‘I don’t think people mean to overrun their time most of the time,’ he said.

‘I would guess that most receive their fines as they are walking back to their car and so miss it by a very small amount of time.’

Beverley Chambers considered the rise to be ‘appalling.’

‘Don’t bother increasing it, do something about the fact that there are more cars on the roads,’ she said.

Chris Shields said the ‘fairly high’ increase – representing 60% of the previous ticket cost – was well above the cost of living.

‘It’s difficult to find spots to park in sometimes,’ he said.

‘We are going to Herm now and to find a 10-hour space has been hard, so I think such a rise is too punitive.’

He would have preferred to see a smaller increase, or the introduction of paid parking.

But tourist Stuart Cartwright, who lives in Bolton and is an annual visitor to Guernsey, warned about the impact that paid parking could have on St Peter Port as a whole.

‘In Bolton town centre everywhere is paid parking and now barely anyone uses those car parks, they go out to the Trafford Centre and other places where parking is free and they shop there instead,’ he said.

‘I’m speaking as someone not from the island but a £25 increase does sound too much, however maybe a more incremental rise would have been better.’