Wardens rake in £2m from one street
 | | Rebecca Hood with two-year-old Freya |
DRIVERS received more than £2million of penalty charge notices in one Islington street in just 12 months.
In all, 22,808 tickets - each worth £100 - were issued to motorists in Junction Road, Archway, in the 12 months to March 31 this year.
The income makes it the worst road for fines in Islington - and the second worst in the whole of London. Top of the list was Atlantic Road, in Lambeth, where drivers received more than £3million worth of fines.
Sam Akgun, 39, who with wife Sevgi runs La Belle Vie Flowers in Junction Road, said: "You don't have a chance here now.
"I have had seven or eight parking tickets and then there is the clamping. They put the tickets on the car and within seconds there's a clamp as well.
"You end up always looking at your car, checking, checking.
"All our delivery drivers and our customers get tickets. It makes it impossible to run a business. Customers do not want to come back.
"We have been here four years and over the last year trade has been very quiet so the figures don't surprise me.
"People used to stop to pick up flowers but now they don't want to risk it."
Resident Rebecca Hood, 29, added: "You always see wardens out and about and it has definitely got worse over the last year.
"We got a ticket when the warden claimed he could not see the permit even though it had been in the same place for two years. We appealed and won as they had no evidence."
Kathryn Phalp, who runs Map gift shop and who is involved with Junction Road Traders' Association, said: "The traffic wardens are crippling business.
"So they made £2.2million. If you added up the losses the shops have made since the controlled parking zone (CPZ) came in [in February 2003], it probably comes to about that.
"I was in favour of the CPZ because we wanted to get rid of the commuter parking. But no one expected these over-zealous, vulture-like wardens. It's obvious the council is making money out of parking."
Ms Phalp, who has written to the Greater London Authority to complain at how bad things are in Junction Road, added that she was pushing for free customer parking, for 20 minutes or an hour, to ease problems.
Jason Cooper, 31, a company representative, travels around the country visiting businesses. He said: "Boroughs like Islington and Camden are the worst. I have to be very careful."
He added: "I'm appealing one ticket as the pay-and-display machine was broken and while I was looking for another, I got a ticket.
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