PEOPLE parking illegally in Swindon have helped the council rack up almost £3m in fines during the last three years.

But this figure would have grown considerably had car park staff not gone out on strike for months last year – which could have lost the council more than £300,000.

Under a Freedom of Information request Swindon Council revealed that parking fines in the town had made it £1.02m between 2008-9 and £1.1m between 2009-10.

The figure was £806,117 last year when the strikes, which also affected leisure centres and parks, saw council staff walk out during weekends in a row over cuts to pay.

The affect on how many parking fines were dished out and how much the council could have made has now been highlighted for the first time. Between 2008-9 parking wardens dished out 36,122 tickets for illegally parked cars, this figure soared to 38,730 the following year.

But between 2010-11 – when the strikes were in full swing – only 27,892 penalty tickets were given out.

Swindon Council has also mapped out the streets where motorists are most likely to be fined.

Between 2008-10 the top three streets where parking tickets were given out were: Davis Place, off Commercial Road, with 1,122 tickets; Newhall Street, also off Commercial Road, with 920; and Clifton Street, where 822 tickets were issued.

And the FoI request has also shown that only a tiny proportion of people given a ticket bother to challenge it. Out of the 36,122 tickets handed out between 2008-9 only 85 people challenged the penalty and of this figure, only 11 were successful.

Between 2009-10, only 126 appeals were lodged against the 38,730 fines and just 65 were successful, the following year just 68 appeals were submitted against the 27,892 fines and just 14 were successful.

A Swindon Council spokesman said: “If we didn’t enforce our parking regulations the town’s roads would quickly become congested and dangerous.

“All money raised from parking fines and car park charges is, by law, ploughed back into transport-related projects in Swindon.

“We only fine drivers who park illegally and there is a well-established and independent appeals process they can use if they wish to challenge why they were ticketed.”

The number of parking wardens employed by the council has fallen from 39 three years ago to 30. A spokesman for Swindon Council added that there had been no reports of abuse or assaults on parking wardens in the last three years.