Derry council owed £500k in fines

Nearly £500,000 in unpaid parking fines is owed to Derry City and Strabane District Council in Northern Ireland, with almost one-third of the debt connected to vehicles from the Republic of Ireland.

The council is owed £476,991 in unpaid parking fines issued at its 15 pay & display car parks. Of this amount, £163,780 relates to vehicles from the Republic of Ireland.

In 2015 the council took over the running of the 15 pay & display car parks from the Department for Regional Development, which is now the Department for Infrastructure.

In December 2017 the council wrote off ‘bad debt’ of £176,703 in connection with unpaid penalty charge notices. “This related to debt handed over to council by central government under the transfer of functions as at 1 April 2015,” said a council spokesman.

He said fines in the 15 car parks are issued by parking operator NSL on behalf of the council and are then collected by the Department for Infrastructure under an Agency Agreement with the council. “The Department for Infrastructure is responsible for the collection of the revenue from the PCNs under the Traffic Management (Northern Ireland) Order 2005.”