Christchurch's most prolific parking warden: How many tickets has he issued?

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Christchurch's most prolific parking warden has dished out more than $200,000 in tickets over the past three years.

Referred to only as Officer C by the Christchurch City Council, the A-plus performaner has issued 17,777 tickets from 2017 to the start of this year, raking in $206,096 in revenue for the council.

Last year he issued 3.1 tickets an hour on average. He has been a parking warden for seven years.

Although Officer C may be a high flyer among parking wardens in Christchurch, he pales compared to Auckland's most prolific warden.

In spite of being in the role for just over a year, he managed to earn the Auckland Council $744,644 in the 13 months leading up to April, issuing 14,250 tickets.

Auckland Council issued an average of about 30,000 tickets a month, about 330,000 across the entire 13 months.

The Auckland officer handed out 5000 more tickets than his closest competitor in the Super City.

Statistics released to the Star show Christchurch council issued 78,811 tickets in 2019, 82,118 in 2018 and 71,268 in 2017.

This resulted in the council collecting $4,310,637 last year, $4,774,817 in 2018 and $4,365,445 in 2017.

A city council spokeswoman said revenue gathering was not the goal for the parking enforcement team.

"The key reasons for parking control is to ensure that vehicles have safe access to the places where the occupants need to go, and that the availability of parking is equitable for all drivers," she said.

Council manager of transport operations Steffan Thomas added the council did not offer bonuses or incentivise officers to write a higher number of infringement notices.

"Officer performance is based on beat coverage, responding to high priority complaints and quality of evidence to support infringement notices," he said.

- Starnews.co.nz