Councils pocket a record £1.2bn profit from car parking
Thu, 02 Oct 2025
Official figures reveal English councils earned a record £1.2bn profit from on-street and off-street parking in the last year, after drivers forked out over £2.3bn for the privilege.
The bounty is up from a profit of just over £1bn last year and less than £900m before the Covid pandemic.
The AA, which revealed the latest figures, says parking fees have become a "full-on local tax" and criticised a lack of regulation holding councils back.
Motorists are now paying half a billion pounds more for parking than in 2019-20, with London councils alone taking nearly £1.1bn in income and making over £600m in profit.
Originally, council parking charges were supposed to cover the cost of controlled and ordered provision says AA head of roads policy Jack Cousens.
"On-street charges might encourage turnover of spaces and permits were supposed to protect residents’ parking from hogging by outsiders.
The idea was that charges would merely cover the cost of parking and enforcement, with some profit from fines and reward for successful parking and commercial policies."
"For too many councils, particularly in cities, the cost of parking seems to have gone from a reasonable charge to a full-on local tax."
This, he said, is because there’s “next to nothing holding them back."
"They create new ways and reasons to plunder more money from people with cars, often on low incomes travelling in for work.
Residents feel hostage to permit costs so high that households often rip up their front gardens and turn them into parking."
The latest local council parking profits were revealed as part of the government’s local revenue expenditure and financing return for England in 2024-25.
