ERRANTS parkers in Worcester were handed more than 3,000 parking tickets in just three months this year.

A survey conducted by insurance comparison site comparethemarket.com made Freedom of Information requests of West Midlands local authorities, and it found Worcester was sixth in terms of number of parking fines handed out for July to September this year.

Birmingham topped the figures with nearly 33,000 tickets issues in that time, and Wolverhampton handed out nearly 23,000.

Coming behind Solihull, Walsall and Dudley, Worcester was the biggest area for parking fines in the county.

The city council’s enforcement officers dished out 3,009 fixed penalty notices in the three month period, and average of 32 per day for the 92 days.

That brought in £84,000 in revenue to the city council.

The hottest spot for tickets was the tiny Silver Street car park. Motorists who overstayed, or didn’t buy or display a ticket in the 19-space car park just off City Walls Road in the city centre received a fine 134 times in the three months.

Other favoured spots for enforcement officers were St Swithun’s Street with 128 tickets issued and Foregate Street with 123 tickets issued in the three summer months.

Simon McCulloch, director at comparethemarket.com said: “Our parking fines hotspots have revealed that motorists need to be extra vigilant when it comes to something as simple as parking their vehicle correctly if they want to avoid a hefty fine. With Christmas on the horizon, £70 would go further in a gift for a loved one than it would in a parking ticket.

“Penalty Charge Notices can be issued for a number of reasons. It can be quite simply for parking somewhere you shouldn’t, failing to show a valid parking ticket, or displaying an expired ticket.

“If you do find yourself with a PCN, it’s worth checking your ticket, as you can often reduce the fee by half, simply by paying it within 7 or 14 days, depending on your local council.”

A spokesman for Worcester City Council said it issued ticket to make sure that all who need to park are able to: “Worcester is a busy city with very high demand for a limited number of parking spaces.

"The city council’s parking team works hard to ensure there is fair use of the available spaces by all drivers.

"If a parking space is being used but not paid for by a motorist, that means someone else can’t park there.

“Silver Street is a pay and display parking bay with 21 spaces.

"It is exceptionally busy and, as with all our car parks and parking bays, we do give drivers a short period of grace before issuing a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) if they stay for a longer period than they have paid for.

"In the period from July to September 134 PCNs were issued there.”

The car park allows parking for a maximum of 90 minutes at a cost of £1.20.

It might be that shoppers at the nearby Asda who overstay the limit are attracting a higher rate of tickets.