COMMENT: If you ignore the rules, you deserve all you get

Are you a council tax payer in Portsmouth? Then no doubt you'll be annoyed to learn that selfish motorists in the city are costing YOU more than £113,000 a year.

Today we reveal the eye-watering amount it is costing to deal with illegally-parked vehicles.

A Freedom of Information request has shown that in the past year alone, the city council’s parking enforcement team has seized 336 vehicles across Portsea Island.

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If that wasn’t bad enough, more than one in 10 of the owners had also racked up hefty parking fines. One had 61 penalty charge notices outstanding worth £4,270.

Add together the unpaid fines and the cost of seizing vehicles and that is how you get to £113,000 – money that could otherwise have been spent on improving services such as adult social care.

We hope all those drivers who have flouted parking laws or ignored fines mounting up will now stop to think and realise that their selfish actions have impacted on everybody.

For example, it’s no wonder residents of Shore Avenue, Milton are breathing a sigh of relief after Shaw Lipscombe, who had unlawfully left a number of vehicles in the road for so long that moss was growing on them, was hauled up in court and had his cars impounded and later crushed.

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We back city council leader Donna Jones when she vows to make sure repeat offenders end up in court and are hit with hefty fines. Maybe then others will think twice.

Illegal parking causes problems wherever it happens, but in such a densely-populated city as Portsmouth the effects are magnified.

With a limited number of parking spaces, it’s a challenge to fit every vehicle in.

Those who refuse to abide by the rules deserve all they get.