Reports of ‘nuisance’ parking are at an ‘all-time high’ according to council officials.
Members of Lincolnshire County Council’s (LCC) highways and transport scrutiny committee were told that the number of reports of so-called ‘nuisance parking’ has risen from 2,533 in 2021/22 to 4,755 reports across Lincolnshire in the 2025/26 financial year, writes Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle.
At a meeting on Monday, July 20, Matt Jones, parking services manager at LCC said: “Our demand for service and resources is at an all-time high now.
“We’ve had just over 4,700 individual requests from members of the public asking for assistance in a variety of locations dotted throughout the county.
“All of these requests that come through to us, we respond to and advise what we can do – and sometimes what we can’t do.
“If there is a contravention occurring, if a form of parking restriction is in place, we’ll always provide the information and guidance as to what we can do in that respect.”
Mr Jones added that the authority “actively encourages” people to report instances of ‘nuisance parking’ so it can deploy its parking enforcement officers “efficiently and effectively”.
He added: “We interact with our contractor daily – multiple times each day. In fact, every Monday – and at the end of every single week, we’ll always look at ‘where are our hotspots, where are our nuisance parking requests coming in?
“For example, if we receive one for Horncastle and it identifies that there’s a concern on a particular day of the week, if we then patrol that location, it doesn’t mean it’s a tick in the box, we hold our hands up, feet on the desk and it’s left.
“We’ll look at ‘when we can go again? What can we do to try and drive greater compliance in that spot?”
Mr Jones explained that the county council’s parking enforcement data analyst examines areas which parking enforcement officers are patrolling to ensure that the authority is making the “most efficient use of the resource.”
He went on to say that the authority has also seen a rise in the number of penalty charge notices (PNCs) – also known as parking fines – which it has issued.
PCNs are fines issued by local authorities as opposed to private companies and are civil offences.
Mr Jones said: “The last three years have been quite consistent. We issued 47,793 in the previous financial year – which is very similar to previous years – with just over 47,000 and just over 48,000.
“So, it’s quite a high issuance in comparison to four or five years ago where they’ve increased by a good nine or ten thousand.
“A lot of that has come from our experience and our intelligence that we’ve gathered over the years, utilising the feedback that we have from councillors and also our residents as well.”
The number of PNCs which the county council has issued across Lincolnshire increased from 31,029 in 2017/18 to 47,793 in 2025/26.
