NEWLY revealed figures show City of York Council took £7.6 million in parking fees last year, and has issued thousands of tickets to people driving down bus lanes.

The city council has issued its draft parking report for last year - showing £7.6 million in parking income from car parks, coach parks and residents parking zones in 2017/18.

At the same time, new data about the Coppergate and Low Poppleton Lane bus lanes shows that more than 2,500 fines have been sent to drivers since the start of 2018.

Bus lane enforcement started on Low Poppleton Lane between the old and new Manor School sites earlier this year, and the figures show that 592 warning letters have been sent out plus 456 penalty charge notices so far this year.

The automatic cameras were switched back on in Coppergate in January last year, but for the initial six months drivers were sent warning letters the first time they drove down the bus lane.

The new figures show that in 2017, more than 7,200 warnings and fines were sent out. For the first four months of this year, 2,200 fines were issued.

Council staff may introduce two more bus lane cameras in the city - at Rawcliffe Bar Park and Ride and at Foss Islands retail park - but a council spokesman said they were still “considering options” before making a public decision.

Last year’s parking report shows that despite an increase in income - from £7.4 million in 2016/17 to £7.6 million last year - the authority faced slightly higher costs and in 2017/18 had just over £4.8 million parking profit.

That money has to be spent on public transport and highways with £4.1 million going on the roads, £582,000 on bus subsidies, and around £114,000 on community transport and Shopmobility.

A city council spokesman said that while the council is required to spend any parking profit on roads and transport, it in fact spends more than that on highways, adding that bus subsidy spending has fallen by £88,000 in the last year because of cuts to the number 20 route which were agreed in 2016/17.

At the same time, they said increased costs to the parking account were caused by the upgrades to pay and display machines needed to cope with new £1 coins.

They also had to spend an extra £40,000 on CCTV, and pay an extra £40,000 to a company to collect cash from the machines.

Similarly, the electricity bill went up by £23,000 because the city council had to pay back public toilet company Healthmatic which had been covering its power bills for Nunnery Lane, St George’s Field and Union Terrace Car Park for a number of years.