A car that is being used to punish drivers for breaking rules has been responsible for dishing out thousands of fines in Reading over the last year.

The Peugeot car, which can often be seen patrolling Reading, has a CCTV camera on its roof with number plate recognition to detect rule breaches.

Once a breach is identified, the owner of the offending vehicle will be fined.

A total of 12,083 fines (penalty charge notice PCNs) were dished out to drivers in 2021/22.

That’s more than three times the number of PCNs that were issued in 2020/21, the previous year, when the car was responsible for 3,467 fines. 

Of the 2021/22 total, 11,332 were issued for drivers stopping the red route, a large majority of which were issued in Oxford Road.

You can see the places where the most PCNs were issued in the table below.

Not all of the fines issued were paid. For example, Lindsay Ewan was able to get a PCN cancelled following an appeal when he was pulling away from the drive of his father’s house in Norcot Road.

Furthermore, not all PCNs enforcing the red route were issued by the enforcement car either – 838 fines were issued directly by the council’s army of parking enforcement officers.

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The total PCNs issued for drivers stopping along the red route was 12,170.

The car is an ‘approved device’, and can only be used to enforce stopping on the town’s red route, stopping at bus stops and stopping at ‘school, keep clear’ markings.

The CCTV car was also used to issue 496 fines to drivers who stopped at bus stops and stands, and 255 for those who stopped at ‘School Keep Clear' road markings. 

The figures are revealed in Reading Borough Council’s annual Parking Services Report.