Parking wardens in ticket target row

Parking wardens have been given targets of nine tickets per day in a Black Country town, a confidential document passed to the Express & Star reveals.

In it, staff are told they are expected to issue more than one ticket each hour and to avoid quiet streets.

A team of 25 wardens from private firm APCOA took over parking enforcement from police in Walsall in April, 2009.

They issued almost 14,500 parking tickets in their first six months - nearly triple the number handed out in an entire year by police.

Tickets were even slapped on a police car and a bus. The firm's latest figures are yet to be revealed.

Bosses from the firm, which also controls parking enforcement in Wolverhampton, Sandwell and South Staffordshire, today launched an inquiry and denied they give targets to wardens, also known as civil enforcement officers (CEOs).

But minutes of the meeting between managers at APCOA's Walsall office, within Walsall Council House in Lichfield Street, state: "We need to be hitting nine tickets per CEO per day.

"Between the months of April and September, we only had two members of staff that have continuously hit the required ration of 1.25 tickets per hour."

Walsall Council has asked for an urgent inquiry.