Council wipes $1.2m in parking tickets

If you get a parking ticket in Christchurch it's well worth challenging it to the council.

By Bridget Rutherford

More than 9000 people wrote to the city council in the past year asking for their parking tickets be waived - and about 59 per cent of those were successful.

Christchurch City Council data released to The Star shows between August 2016 and July, 73,512 tickets were issued.

The total value of those was $5.9 million.

During that time, the city council received 9579 written submissions asking for their tickets to be waived, relating to 11,778 individual tickets.

Of those submissions, 7053 tickets were waived, at a total of $1.2 million.

The city council was unable to give the reasons why the tickets were waived, because its system did not record it and it would have to be retrieved manually.

In total, the city council received about $4.6 million in parking ticket fines.

If a motorist is issued a ticket by a parking warden, and they think it is not warranted, they can write to the city council with the circumstances asking it to be waived.

It would then be considered by the inspections and enforcements unit.

- Star.kiwi