Shirehall officials today denied claims by a consumer champion that they have set targets for issuing parking tickets to drivers in Shropshire.

Which? has been investigating parking charges and reports its findings in its September magazine. It says the Department for Transport recommends that councils should not regard parking as a means of raising revenue and should not set targets for the number of penalty charge notices they issue.

Freedom of Information Act requests showed that 94 per cent of the 95 councils that responded did not have targets.

However, it found that six councils – including Shropshire – did expect a certain number of penalty charge notices to be issued.

A spokeswoman for Which? said that figures obtained for 2006/07 showed that the then Shropshire County Council’s business plan – before the authority switched to unitary status this year – estimated 24,870 tickets would be issued.

The actual figure for the year was 19,211. But Shropshire Council spokesman Simon Alton said: “Shropshire Council has never set targets for the number of penalty charge notices issued.

“An estimated number of notices is used to help with budget planning, but that is in no way intended as a target and is not used as such.

“Indeed, it was recently agreed that Shropshire Parking would be more lenient towards drivers and there is no expectation that a certain amount of notices should be issued.”

This year there was a major shift in parking enforcement policy.

The number of wardens was halved and it was decided to issue more warnings rather than tickets.

There were complaints from many businesses across Shropshire and members of the public that the service was inflexible, bureaucratic and overzealous, and was damaging trade in Shrewsbury and many other market towns.

This prompted a review to look at ways of developing a service which was more customer-focused and friendly.

By Dave Morris