Taking a leaf out of Westminster’s book

Westminster has a salutary lesson for all councils this week – make sure you get tough on enforcement in these lean times.

The council is naming and shaming the drivers of foreign-registered vehicles, many of them supercars, in an effort to recover some £4M owed in parking fines.

The council claims the owners of Bugattis, Ferraris and Lamborghinis routinely flout parking restrictions because they know officials struggle to trace them in their own countries.

In the past three years, offenders have failed to settle a total of 36,332 parking tickets, leaving the council £3,776,490 out of pocket.

To put all this into context, the owner of a Bugatti Veyron would have spent £1.2M and have failed to pay a £120 fine for parking on a single yellow line outside Selfridges.

The council is calling on the Government to help establish a system of international co-operation to allow local authorities to trace foreign motorists – 80 per cent of whom refuse to pay fines.