Parking tickets league table - the penalties issued in Helston

Parking tickets, the bane of a motorist's life. Whether you have decided to quickly park somewhere you shouldn't to run an errand or quickly nip into town without paying to park you should always keep to the rules.

Thousands of parking tickets are issued in Cornwall every year – but which town in Cornwall sees the most penalties issued?

Will it be a tourist hotspot like Newquay? A picturesque port like Mevagissey? Or a retail magnet such as Truro?

Cornwall Council has published figures showing where tickets have been issued over the past year.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 April and May of this year saw just two tickets handed out – both in April and both in Newquay.

But in June they were back and a total of 1,652 were issued to motorists not playing by the rules.

Here are the top five areas in June this year:

1 – Newquay, 338

2 – Falmouth, 137

3 – Freathy, 100

4 – Truro, 91

5 – Penzance, 90

And here are the top 20 areas for parking tickets for the year from April 2019 to March 2020:

1 – Falmouth, 4,789

2 – Truro, 4,590

3 – Newquay, 3,181

4 – St Ives, 2,712

5 – Penzance, 2,321

6 – St Austell, 1,253

7 – Liskeard, 1,173

8 – Helston, 954

9 – Camborne, 824

10 – Penryn, 811

11 – Launceston, 800

12 – Bodmin, 767

13 – Wadebridge, 766

14 – Padstow, 703

15 – Redruth, 656

16 – Bude, 623

17 – Looe, 613

18 – Hayle, 473

19 – St Mawes, 455

20 – Callington, 438

In total Cornwall issued 34,675 parking tickets in the year from April 2019 to March 2020.

The council has also revealed the offences for which parking tickets have been issued. The top one was "parked in a restricted street during prescribed hours" for which 28,418 tickets were issued between January 2018 and June 2020.

"Parked for longer than permitted" accounted for 10,241 tickets handed out while 4,386 tickets were issued for being "parked in a loading place or bay during restricted hours without loading".

For tickets issued in car parks the top reason was for not clearly displaying a valid pay and display ticket with 15,213 offences.

Another 3,014 were issued for being parked after a ticket ran out and 2,410 were for "not parked correctly within the markings of a bay or space."

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