Milton Keynes Parking Surplus Hit £12.8m: Where It Went

On-street parking in and around Central Milton Keynes brought in £12.797m more than it cost to run in 2025/26. That is the surplus set out in a council report published this month and put to a delegated decision on Tuesday 25 August.

The report is a legal requirement. Section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 forces every council to keep a separate parking account and to review each year what it does with any surplus. Milton Keynes cannot simply bank the money.

The decision was listed for Councillor Lauren Townsend, the deputy leader and cabinet member for resources and customer experience. When we checked the council’s decisions register on Wednesday 26 August, the decision record for the 25 August meeting had not yet been published. The figures themselves are already public in the report and its annexes.

Where the money came from

Annex A sets out total on-street income of £15.777m:

• parking tariff charges: £10.678m
• permits: £3.272m
• penalty charge notices: £1.820m
• bay suspensions: £7,000

Running the service cost £2.980m. The largest single line is £1.932m in contractor management fees, which Annex C says covers the Saba enforcement contract and the EGIS systems contract. RingGo text and data costs came to £586,000, staffing £169,000 and machine depreciation £153,000.

Income minus costs leaves the £12.797m surplus.

Where it went

Annex B lists £15.395m of spending that qualifies under Section 55. The parking surplus paid for £12.797m of it. The council’s general fund covered the remaining £2.598m.

Broken down by heading:

• passenger transport, £5.306m: concessionary fares £3.676m, the passenger transport team £489,000, direct responsive transport £473,000, community transport £396,000 and bus subsidies £272,000
• capital investment in highways, £4.948m
• parking, £3.514m: other off-street car parks £1.755m, cleansing £1.564m, maintenance and energy £99,000, winter gritting £84,000, multi-storey car parks £7,000, landscaping £5,000
• environmental improvements, £1.088m: improving land by roads, open spaces and recreational facilities that are free to use
• other passenger transport projects, £363,000: bus infrastructure £211,000, real time passenger information £73,000, MK Coachway £41,000, the Novus scheme £27,000 and studies £11,000
• traffic staffing and management, £149,000: traffic management £99,000, road safety £50,000
• publicity, £27,000

Concessionary fares alone, the older person’s and disabled person’s bus pass, account for more than a quarter of the whole surplus.

Why the surplus is this large

Parking charges in the city centre had not changed since 2015. In November 2024 the council approved the first rise in over a decade, to take effect in March 2025 or soon after. That falls inside the 2025/26 financial year the new report covers.

Officers estimated at the time that the changes would raise the surplus by £3m to £3.5m. The council’s draft budget put the parking income budget up by £4.85m and forecast a surplus of £13.379m for the year. The outturn of £12.797m came in £582,000 below that forecast.

The stated aim was not only revenue. The 2024 report argued that parking should be priced closer to the cost of a bus fare, and it carried a letter of support from the Milton Keynes Bus Partnership.

The parking reserve closed the year at £383,000, after £178,000 was drawn for the Central Milton Keynes revitalisation programme and £55,000 for off-street car park maintenance. Annex A dates the opening balance to 1 April 2026, which appears to be a slip for 1 April 2025.

Next year is budgeted higher again

The council’s 2026/27 budget annex forecasts budgeted parking income of £16.348m and a surplus of £13.549m. It earmarks £4.845m for sustainability funding for highways improvement works, £4.008m for concessionary fares and £1.228m for bus subsidies.

It also sets investment in new off-street parking at zero.

What it means for you

Every pound of that surplus is money the council would otherwise have to find elsewhere or not spend. Its own highways budget page says the highways budget “has been significantly reduced over the last few years”, and names parking revenue as one of the ringfenced sources that fills the gap. The four things it can legally fund are off-street parking, public transport, highways and road improvements, and environmental improvements.

If you park in the city centre, the charges currently published by the council are:

• standard tariff, purple bays: £1 per hour for the first two hours, then 50p per hour, with a two-hour minimum stay
• premium tariff, red bays: £2.50 for the first hour, then £2 per hour
• long stay, blue bays: £10 all day
• E1 employee permit: £3 per day, or £2 for five hours

Charges apply from 7am to 6pm every day except Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. The council says Central Milton Keynes has more than 20,000 parking spaces. Motorcycles park free in dedicated motorcycle bays and in pay and display bays.

If you think a ticket was wrongly issued, penalty charge notices raised £1.820m last year and each one carries a right of appeal, set out on the council’s parking tickets page.

For what is happening on the roads the surplus helps pay for, see our Milton Keynes roadworks and travel page, and for the schemes behind them our planning news.