Number of on-street parking fines up 36%

The Penalty Charge Notice Statistics 2015 & 2016 report, published by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), reveals that the number of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) handed out to motorists in the town rose from 710 in 2015 to 964 last year - an increase of almost 36 per cent.

The situation was somewhat different in Dromore, where the number of parking tickets handed out for on-street offences fell from 118 in 2015 to just 91 last year.

In Gilford just five fixed penalty fines were handed out for on-street parking contraventions in 2016 - one more than the previous year.

The report also reveals that a total of 3,862 parking tickets were issued for off-street parking offences in council-controlled car parks in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon area during 2015. A total of 659 of those PCNs were issued in Banbridge, while none were issued in Dromore, according to the DfI statistics.

There was a significant increase in the number of tickets issued in Armagh, Banbridge, Craigavon Council-controlled car parks last year, with 4,441 drivers being hit with PCNs. Of those 783 were issued in the Banbridge area (an increase of almost 19 per cent year-on-year), while seven were handed out to motorists in Dromore.

Across Northern Ireland a total of 84,876 PCNs were issued in 2016 for on-street parking violations - an increase of 11 per cent from 2015.

Last year just over two-fifths (41 per cent) of all on-street PCNs were issued in Belfast.

The number of off-street parking PCNs issued across Northern Ireland also increased by 11 per cent year-on-year, to 36,041 in 2016.

The full report - the first such publication produced by the Analysis, Statistics and Research Branch (ASRB) of the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) - is available online at www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk