Foreign super car drivers owe £4million in parking fines

Wealthy foreign drivers are racking up millions of pounds in unpaid parking tickets safe in the knowledge that British authorities cannot trace them overseas, Westminster Council has revealed.

Westminster Council said foreign owned cars and motorbikes owed it almost £4million in unpaid fines over the last three years with more than 80% of overseas drivers refusing to pay for tickets.

Hundreds of motorists from across Europe, the USA and the Middle East are routinely flouting the rules of the road which UK motorists have to obey or risk a hefty parking fine, according to the council.
The problem is particularly bad in expensive parts of central London where super-cars such as Ferraris, Bugattis and Lamborghinis can regularly be seen parking on yellow lines, in bus lanes or in residents' parking bays.

It follows a spate of complaints from residents in Knightsbridge who say their night-time peace is being shattered by the super-rich racing their sports cars through the streets.

Westminster Council is now calling for a change in legislation that would allow local authorities access of overseas driver and vehicle registration data and enable them to enforce parking fines.

Cabinet member for parking, Cllr Lee Rowley, said all motorists who break traffic laws should be subject to the same penalties, regardless of their citizenship or where their vehicle is registered.
Cllr Rowley said: "British taxpayers can no longer foot the bill for foreign motorists who seem think the rules of this country do not apply to them.

"We would like to see a more rigorous system put in place to hold these drivers to account and send a clear message that this blatant disregard of the law will not be tolerated."

Under current EU legislation, the UK’s decriminalised driving and parking laws are considered administrative and fall outside the scope of both criminal and decriminalised EU legislation and regulations.

This means that UK local authorities with decriminalised regimes cannot use UK or EU legal systems to pursue unpaid financial penalties they have issued to vehicles registered outside the UK.

According to Sparks, a coalition of London councils established to tackle the problem of penalty dodging by foreign drivers, a total of 330,000 tickets worth £12.9 million are issued to foreign-registered vehicles in London each year for parking and other contraventions.

One in eight foreign registered vehicle owners fails to pay their congestion charge.