EAST Lothian Council hired two extra parking attendants just to patrol its coastal car parks, a new report has revealed.

More than one in four parking fines issued in the county are estimated to be issued in the coastal car parks.

A report to the local authority’s policy and performance review committee this week revealed that last year, parking attendants made 3,699 visits to the coastal car parks – an average of 10 times a day.

It said that in 2017, the council employed a seasonal parking attendant to visit the coastal sites between April and September, and ended up making the position permanent because of “ever-increasing requests for additional enforcement within our town centres”.

The following year, the council took on another seasonal attendant to cover the coastal car parks.

The report said that the increased number of patrols at the sites “can therefore be attributable to the extra two parking attendants joining the team”.

The income from the coastal parking fees continues to rise annually, the committee was told, although it has still not reached the £350,000 the council predicts each year in its budget.

Instead, councillors were told it was expected to bring in income of £285,000 this year while incurring costs of £83,809 – £55,000 of which goes towards the cost of private parking attendants in the county.

In total, 2,237 of 7,624 penalty notices issued over the last year to date were issued in the coastal car parks.

The meeting was told that the introduction of RingGo cashless payment system in the car parks had helped boost number of tickets sold; however, it was revealed there were still a large number of people who do not pay.

Peter Forsyth, roads manager, told the committee that at Longniddry Bents “we have 19 per cent of the total income from the car parks but 30 per cent of visits”, adding that one-third of visitors overall were still not paying.

Many of the visits to Longniddry were described as “short visits”, with a suggestion people might be stopping to have their lunch in their vehicles and leaving when parking attendants arrive.