With more than 18.7 million Brits (36%) planning to drive to the shops this Christmas, the shopping comparison site, finder.com, commissioned a freedom of information request to find the cities where people are most, and least, likely to get a parking fine in December.

Londoners are most likely to get a fine when doing their Christmas shopping with 304,000 parking fines being issued in December 2020. This represents a whopping 5% of the capital’s population and means Londoners are over 3 times more likely to get a parking fine than the national average. It also means that the odds of getting a ticket in London is 54 times higher than in Belfast, the best place to park. Just to make matters worse, a fine will cost £94.50 on average when issued, making London the most expensive city for parking fines.

Within London the worst place to park is in the City of London with 12,800 parking tickets issued in the weeks before Christmas 2019, despite the population being only 9720. This is equivalent to 132% of the population being fined, however this is likely due to drivers travelling into the area. The best place to park during Christmas in the capital is Ealing, with less than 1% (0.9%) of the locals getting a ticket.

The second worst place for parking tickets is Nottingham, with 4% of the population receiving fines over the festive period last year. 11,800 tickets were issued by the council, meaning locals were over twice as likely to get one compared to the UK average.  Edinburgh comes in third place for the likelihood of getting a parking fine with 3% (14,300) of their residents receiving a ticket during the festivities last year.

The FOI was sent to the councils of the UK’s 20 most populated cities (plus all London boroughs) and received a reply from 83% of them.

The best city was Belfast, there were only 317 fines administered last December, meaning that 0.09% of their population received a fine, which is 18 times higher than the national average.

The second best city for Christmas parking is Sheffield, with 0.65% of residents being fined (3,800), while Sunderland follows with 0.76% (2,100) of locals receiving a ticket. This means the odds of getting a ticket in these cities is less than half the UK average.

Of the cities analysed over 399,000 parking fines were issued in the lead up to Christmas in 2019, meaning that £33.5 million of parking charges were issued last December, while the average ticket price came out at £54. The city with the cheapest fines last year was Cardiff, with a ticket only costing locals an average of £6.63.