by Joe Walker

Motorists in Canterbury are more likely to be slapped with a parking ticket than anywhere else in Kent.

Latest figures reveal the district's traffic wardens dished out more than 25,000 fines in the last financial year - netting the council up to £730,000.

It was almost 4,000 ahead of any other district and more than the total handed out in the whole of Dartford and Thanet combined.

But the city council continues to claim the strict enforcement is not a money-making scheme.

The statistics - released by the Department for Transport - show 25,275 tickets were left on drivers' windscreens in Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay between April 2009 and March 2010.

This compares to 7,811 dished out in Dartford - home to Kent's most lenient traffic wardens.

It has led to claims the city council uses parking fines to swell its coffers, with campaigners saying drivers are being treated like "cash cows".

Jennifer Dunn, of the Drivers' Alliance and TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "For many councils parking fines have become a lucrative source of income.

"But while revenues are being made at the cost of the motorist, taxpayers haven't seen their council tax fall, or their local services improve.

"Motorists are being treated like cash cows."

It's not the first time the city council has come under fire for its strict enforcement, with single mum Alison Bore branding them "despicable" after she was clobbered in Canterbury's Holmans Meadow car park last year.

She was hit with a £25 fine just one minute before her ticket was issued.

She said: "I ran over and asked what he was doing, and explained that I was only at the machine getting a ticket.

"It couldn't have been more than five minutes from me parking to getting the ticket.

"It just seems incredibly unfair. I feel like I have been bullied into admitting something I haven't done."

The city council's public safety boss Larissa Laing blamed the high figures on having three "urban centres" in the district.

She added: "Motorists can be reassured that we do not go out of our way to issue fines and our civil enforcement officers do not have targets to hit for issuing penalty charge notices.

"And of course, if the regulations were never broken, we wouldn't issue any at all."