BRADFORD Council is owed more than £1.6 million in unpaid parking fines from the last three years.

The figure has been released following a Freedom of Information request by the Telegraph & Argus, which has also revealed the most ticketed roads in the Bradford district.

Almost £420,000 in unpaid fines is still outstanding from the financial year 2014-15, with more than £500,000 outstanding from 2015-16, and more than £730,000 in 2016-17.

There are currently 16,613 unpaid parking fines owed to Bradford Council.

Piccadilly and Kirkgate in Bradford city centre are the two roads with the highest numbers of unpaid fines, with 1,249 and 1,227 outstanding from the last three years, respectively.

A total of £1,657,895.57 is owed in outstanding fines across the district, £419,935.83 from 2014/15, £505,947.26 from 2015/16, and £732,012.48 from 2016/17. There are 4,132, 5,166, and 7,315 fines outstanding from the three years, respectively.

The reason the figure for 2016/17 is significantly higher than previous year is, according to Bradford Council, that it can take a few months for payments to be processed, and a similar search next year would return a figure similar to previous years.

Other roads with large numbers of outstanding fines include Rawson Road with 660, Broadway with 612, Aldermanbury with 485, and Bank Street with 434.

Cheapside has 384, Vicar Lane has 378, and Sunbridge Road, North Parade, and Great Horton Road all have more than 300 unpaid fines each.

A Council spokesman said: “Bradford Council passes unpaid parking fines on to recovery agencies whose job it is to track down and recover unpaid fines.

“They employ bailiffs who can recover the cash or the cost of fines in property.

“The Council employs wardens to enforce parking regulations.

“The figure is currently higher for this financial year as it can take a good few months to progress through Enforcement Agents where a Penalty Charge Notice is unpaid.

“If we ran the same search at this time next year we would expect results to be in-line with previous years as more payments had been collected.”

Parking fines are either £50 or £70 depending on the seriousness of the offence. If the fine is paid within 14 days of receiving a Penalty Charge Notice, the charge is reduced by half, but after 14 days the vehicle owner will have to pay the full fine.

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, leader of the Council's Liberal Democrats group, called the outstanding figure “a huge sum of money”.

She said: “That money could have been used to protect youth services from cuts and to provide services to vulnerable people.

“It’s a lot of money to let go, and there needs to be an investigation into why this many fines have not been collected.”

Cllr Sunderland said she has “no idea” why people are not paying their fines, but said it is probably because drivers “resent” getting parking tickets or that the Council is not doing enough to collect the fines.

Conservative group leader, Councillor Simon Cooke, called for parking laws to be strictly enforced.

“We can argue about parking costs and where to put yellow lines, but we need to make sure we enforce these rules otherwise people will think they can get away with it," he said.

“I would support any action the Council takes to recover the money.

“I would like to see the Council having the power to seize vehicles that are parked illegally. If people feel they can get away with it they will keep doing it.”

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, the executive member for transport at the Labour-run Council, urged people who have not paid to do so.

He added: “We do everything we can to recover the money owed and over time we will recover more from what the figures show.

“This money helps fund Council services so the more we can recover, the more we can protect our services from Government cuts that are being forced on us, so I would urge everyone with an outstanding fine to pay it promptly.”