Less than 65 per cent of parking fines issued in Dover, Deal and Sandwich are actually paid - the lowest figure in Kent.

The figures are revealed today following requests made under the Freedom of Information Act by the Kent Messenger Group.

More than 600 drivers in Kent are given parking fines every day. Around 240,000 penalty charge notices (PCNs) were handed out last year, but only 172,000 (72 per cent) were actually paid.

In Dover district, 15,374 were issued but only 9,759 - 63 per cent - were paid.

Some 4,124 were contested, and 2,363 (15 per cent of all those issued) were written off.

The previous year wasn't much better, with 15,741 tickets issued, and only 9,926 were paid - 63 per cent again. In the year 2008/09, Dover again had the lowest percentage, 64 per cent, when 11,031 of the 17,093 tickets issued were paid.

The year before that, 20,888 tickets were issued, and 13,351 were paid which was 63.92 per cent - just ahead of Thanet where it was 63.8 per cent.

Last year, most tickets, 912, were issued in Sainsbury's car park in West Street, Deal, followed by Middle Street (871), Castle Street in Dover (631), Stembrook car park in Dover (496) and Beach Street in Deal (489).

Our research also revealed drivers in Sevenoaks are least likely to challenge tickets (13 per cent), while motorists in Swale are the most likely to appeal (34 per cent). In Dover the figure was 26 per cent.

Throughout Kent, some 35,000 fines were cancelled last year, following protests from drivers who felt they had been wrongly punished.

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