Revealed: Which car owners pay the most parking penalties in Hackney

Figures acquired via Freedom of Information request from Hackney Borough show that owners of high-end cars are less likely to pay their parking fines within the first two weeks, as compared to owners of more common car makes.

The regular fee for illegal parking in Hackney is either £80 or £130. According to Emma Wynne, a spokesperson for Hackney Council: “These charges are determined by the severity of the offence, and are not set by individual local authorities.”

People served parking tickets have the opportunity to only pay half of the fine if they make their payment within the first 14 days of receipt (21 days for those caught by CCTV), meaning they only have to pay £40 or £65. Overall, 73 per cent penalised car owners in Hackney paid their fine within the grace period, thus paying the discounted rate.

Owners of Rolls Royce and Lamborghini cars were found to be the least likely to pay their fine within 14 days, with only 38 per cent and 40 per cent taking up the opportunity respectively. Owners of Ferraris and Porsches followed them as the least likely to pay within the first fortnight.

There are occasions when the penalty can rise even higher than £130. Ms. Wynne explains: “In some cases, vehicles need to be removed and impounded, such as when they are causing a public safety risk, or are a cloned vehicle. The impounding of vehicles leads to the levying of vehicle storage fees, which can lead to an increase in the total amount owed to recover the vehicle.”

It was found that 14.3 per cent of Rolls Royce penalty payments were in excess of £130, followed by Porsche and BMW at 9.3 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively. The highest single penalty was for a Porsche, which was charged £2,185 in May 2018.

Owners of Ford cars have contributed the most to Hackney via parking penalty charge notices in the last few years. Between January 2017 and December 2019 there were 39,317 parking tickets issued to Fords in Hackney, totalling £1,839,085 in fines collected by the borough.

However, this is more to do with the number of Fords in the borough rather than the owners’ negligence. Ford owners are in fact among the most likely to pay their tickets within the first two weeks. Fiona Bradley, a Hackney resident and driver of a Ford Focus, says: “I always make sure pay my parking tickets straight away so that I don’t end up forgetting and paying more than I have to.”

When looking at the average penalty paid by owners of different cars, the story is even clearer. Rolls Royce owners had the highest average penalty payment at £80.18. Comparatively, Ford owners paid £46.78 on average. Across all 120 makes of vehicle fined in Hackney, the average penalty payment was £50.93.