‘It’s daylight robbery,’ said one resident of the parking tickets in Cathays
CARDIFF Council made £873,120 from parking fines in Cathays in 2022, an increase of £221,000 from the previous year, figures show.
According to a Freedom of Information request submitted to Cardiff council by The Cardiffian, 28,631 parking fines were issued in the Cathays ward in 2022.
That compares with 19,584 in 2021.
In 2022, Cardiff Council introduced a new zonal parking scheme to increase resident parking and eliminate unrestricted parking.
Zones were created so that residents could park on adjacent streets as well as on their own street. And the majority of non-permitted roads were removed.
On busy roads such as Salisbury Road, Crwys Road and Cathays Terrace, one to two hours of free parking was introduced.
The zonal parking system was established to help residents. But it has coincided with a surge in the number of tickets being handed out. And that has frustrated permit owners in the area.
Oliver Rayner, 22, who lives in Cathays and received a parking ticket in 2022, described parking issues in Cathays as an “ongoing problem”.
“The parking in Cathays is honestly atrocious,” he said. “I’ve lived in multiple different houses, on multiple different streets since being in Cardiff Uni and every single street is the exact same – you just cannot park.
“I was living on Harriet Street last year, and specifically in that area of Cathays, your chances of being able to park near your house, or simply on your street, are second to none. The only way I can describe it is daylight robbery. You are being charged to park in your own area for which you have a permit.
“Cardiff Council have issued two hours of parking with no permit when they clearly cannot facilitate permit parking in itself. If the traffic wardens were to simply check the permits of the cars they were ticketing – they could quite easily understand that there was no other option for the driver.”
Since the launch of the new scheme, shops in Cathays have said they have lost business due to customers and staff being unable to park.
Liam Slater of W.J. Gardner on Crwys Road previously told The Cardiffian that the new parking system had created issues for his business and that one of his staff was fined as he was unable to find a non-permitted space.
Mr Slater said his staff member “had to pay £30 to come to work.” Other shops on the road also noted this same issue.
Councillor Norma Mackie said that the surge in fines was most likely due to a high volume of complaints which led to the parking enforcement teams going out more.
“So many residents were complaining because they couldn’t park and cars had been sat there for months,” she said.
The scheme was introduced to help residents and Coun Mackie described the scheme as a “success” in tackling the area’s parking issues.
“We had a lot of cars parked from businesses and cars parked from people who worked in the city who would park their car and walk in for work. Their cars would sit there then for eight hours,” Coun Mackie said.
The FOI also revealed that Windsor Place was the road where the biggest number of parking tickets was issued.
As illustrated below, Cardiff city centre is incorporated into the Cathays ward.
By February 21 2023, 5342 fines had been issued in Cathays.
