Penalty Charge Notices in Stirling on the rise, following sharp drop over first COVID lockdown

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By Nikita Vance

 

New data obtained from Stirling Council shows that when Scotland first went into lockdown in 2020, the amount of PNC’s administered by the Council had a sharp decline in comparison to that of the previous year.

The severe drop in PNC’s administered in 2020 was directly caused by the stringent measures put in place by Nicola Sturgeon on 23 March that year, which meant that less people were driving or parking their cars in ticketible zones in Stirling. These measures saw that people in Scotland were required by law to stay at home except for:
  • Essential shopping – for food or medicines and only once a day
  • Exercise – only once a day and alone, or with someone from your household
  • Medical reasons or for the care of vulnerable people
  • Travel to and from essential work – all employers should be making provision to work from home

Of these measures, the First Minister said, “Let me blunt. The stringent restrictions on our normal day to day lives that I’m about to set out are difficult and they are unprecedented. They amount effectively to what has been described as a lockdown.”

“I am not going to sugarcoat it in any way,” the first minister said. “Coronavirus is the biggest challenge of our lifetime.

“Stay at home,” she said. “That is the message I gave yesterday and I am reinforcing that message now.”

Police Scotland also enforced this legislation, by increasing police patrols in key areas such as cities. This build up of fear and compliance further decreased the amount of people leaving their homes, not to mention those who would drive. With less cars on the road, there were less PCN’s needed to be administered.

The Stirling Council data supports this assumption, as there is no data for April or May 2020 so therefore no PCN’s were administered. This could also be due to that fact that some UK councils relaxed or even suspended parking enforcement regulations at the start of the first lockdown, which could well have been the case here.

 

The data also shows that the most ticketed months of each year are affected by COVID lockdowns. In 2019, before COVID, November was the most ticketed month of the year. This is due to the influx of people travelling by car into Stirling, as they most likely would be going for Christmas shopping.

The following year, however, the most ticketed month was January as the first case of COVID had not yet reached the UK until the end of that month. Following the announcement that the first case of COVID had been detected in the UK on 29 January 2020, people became fearful of contracting the virus and left the house much less. Then, with Scotland in lockdown by March 2020 no one was able to leave their house hence less tickets for the remainder of that year.

By 2021, life returned to some semblance of normality, as the high vaccine uptake encouraged the First Minister to lift restrictions in the run up to Christmas. This meant that the shopping behaviours of those in Stirling not only returned to normal, but almost doubled as the most tickets across the four years were issued in this month.

 

Top 5 Most Ticketed Places in Stirling

From the data, we have worked out the top 5 places in Stirling to avoid if you do not want to get a PNC. This is solely based of the amount of times each area was ticketed per month in 2020, therefore it does not take into account total amount of PNC’s issued.
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