Cheating motorists have failed to pay £50,000 in parking fines in 12 months.

The fines, attached to 1,400 penalty charge notices, have been written off by Bradford Council because it has been unable to trace the owners of the offending vehicles.

Unscrupulous drivers have got away with it because the authorities have been unable to trace uninsured, untaxed or foreign vehicles.

A spokesman for Bradford Council said it had written off the tickets, based on penalty charge notices costing £35 each, between April 1, 2009, when the local authority took over the responsibility for penalising parking offences from the police, and March 31 this year.

Councillor Ghazanfer Khaliq, the Council’s executive member with responsibility for parking, said: “In these difficult times any income loss to the Council is a big blow.

“The loss of this income is extremely disappointing. This money could have been spent on alleviating pressure on Council services.”

Paul Ratcliffe, the Council’s parking services manager, said: “We do everything we can to track down the drivers of vehicles which have been parked illegally and received a penalty charge notice.

“We can only act on information received from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.”

The DVLA insisted that action was being taken to catch up with criminal drivers in Bradford.

A total of 453 untaxed vehicles were clamped and/or impounded in the Bradford area between the beginning of September 2009 and the end of September this year.

Meanwhile, West Yorkshire Police report that they have seized 2,116 vehicles for having no insurance and 278 vehicles for not being properly licensed in the Bradford district between July 2009 and June 2010.

Police officers have issued almost 7,000 tickets to motorists committing non-parking motoring offences in the Bradford South division in the same period.

A DVLA spokesman said: “The DVLA has specialist services in place to ensure local authorities have access to vehicle-keeper data to help enforce unpaid parking charges. Information is provided where a charge remains unpaid after the initial 28-day period for payment.

“As for tracing the registered keeper of a vehicle, 97.1 per cent of all vehicle keepers can be contacted using DVLA’s records.”

Coun Khaliq said: “Sooner or later these drivers will be caught up with.

“Positive steps have been taken so far which sends out a clear message that these vehicles shouldn’t be on the road.”