Parking charges and fines levied on motorists by Worcester City Council made it nearly £2.5 million in ‘profit’ last year.

While that pales in comparison to the £73m made in surplus parking charges for the same year by Westminster City Council, and even the £11m made by Birmingham City Council, it’s the largest surplus from parking made in 2016 /17 by any local authority in Worcestershire.

But bosses at Worcester's Guildhall say that every penny in ‘profit’ made by the council is ploughed back into improving provision for motorists, and that it offers good value for parking.

Figures have been compiled for every local authority in England by the RAC Foundation and it shows that the city council is 86th out of 353 English authorities for the amount of ‘profit’ it made from managing parking, receiving £2,416,000 more than it spent.

That’s broadly comparable to its surplus for the previous four years which have all been above £2m.

A spokeswoman for Worcester City Council said: “Worcester is a vibrant city drawing in thousands of visitors each day so it is crucial that we keep the city’s roads free from obstruction and offer visitors safe, clean, convenient and value-for-money parking.

“Our parking charges were once again frozen this year and we are proud that our charges are lower than many neighbouring towns and cheaper than commercial operators. In the run-up to Christmas we are also offering free parking after 6pm on Thursdays and visitors can park all day on a Sunday for as little as £1.20.

“The income we get from our car parks and off-street parking, whilst being great value to drivers, brings in revenue that supports other council services such as street cleaning and our parks, and has allowed us to continue to invest in a vibrant and prosperous city.”

The figures used by the RAC have been compiled by Whitehall’s Department for Culture and Local Government.

They say that the city council does much better out of car parks than managing on-road parking.

In fact it made a ‘loss’ in managing parking on the city street - it spent £509,000 on enforcing parking, but received £312,000 in charges, a ‘loss’ of £197,000.

But it more than made up for that from charges for parking in car parks. It spent £770,000 in maintaining off-street car parks and enforcing regulations. But received £3,383,000 in fees, charges and other income from car parks.

That was a ‘profit’ of £2.613m, which set against the ‘loss’ of £197,000 for on-street parking, meant the total surplus for parking in Worcester was £2.416m.

The city council said that reflected the money raised compared to direct parking costs, such as installing a new parking metre or staff costs of those directly employed in parking, but did not reflect other costs, such as back-office functions at the Guildhall, which were still necessary to run the council’s parking provision.

In the rest of the county only Wychavon District Council came close to that figure, making a surplus of £2.075m. Bromsgrove District Council made a surplus of £536,000; Wyre Forest made £482,000; Malvern Hills District Council £289,000.

Worcestershire County Council made neither a surplus nor a profit from managing parking – which is run by district councils, and Redditch Borough Council actually made a ‘loss’ spending £56,000 on managing parking than it received in fees and charges.