Enforcers to pay up as council backs £62k fine for mistakes

COUNCILLORS have approved moves to hit Edinburgh's parking enforcers with a £62,000 fine after thousands of tickets had to be cancelled because of mistakes.

NCP Services has had the cash deducted from its annual payment from the city council because more than 3000 parking tickets – worth at least £90,000 – were scrapped due to errors by attendants.

Other areas where NCP was penalised financially by the city council included staffing levels and the number of illegally parked cars removed from the city's streets.

Figures show that of the 215,653 tickets issued in the first year of the contract, 75 per cent were paid in full. Of 12,000 tickets that were cancelled, parking attendant error was responsible for a quarter of them – thought to be mainly due to new handheld computers.

Council chiefs raked in £5.6 million from parking tickets in the first year of NCP's contract and just under £10m from pay-and-displays at the same time.