Park and rise - Telegraph Fifty-five years ago this summer, Britain's first parking meters were installed in central London to free up spaces for local businesses affected by growing town centre traffic. At the outset, the imposition of parking restrictions was about traffic management and congestion relief, not about raising money. Today, local authorities in England and Wales raise around £1.4 billion from on- and off-street charges and spend some £800 million to administer the system, making a profit of more than £500 million. Councils invariably deny that they are using parking charges to boost revenues, since it is against the law to do so. But Barnet council in north London admitted that this was precisely what it was up to when it increased the cost of permits in the borough's controlled parking zones (CPZs). It said it needed the additional income to meet projected expenditure for road maintenance and improvements, concessionary fares and other road transport costs. In the High Court yesterday, Mrs Justice Lang declared this practice illegal under the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act. "It does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue for other transport purposes," she ruled. This has massive implications not just for London but for any other town or city where CPZs have sprung up ostensibly to relieve congestion but in reality as another form of local taxation. Barnet's story will be familiar to many residents: an initially modest charge is ramped up until families with two cars are paying hundreds of pounds a year, with additional charges for visitors. At least Barnet was up-front about its intentions. How many more councils might find their parking regimes in jeopardy if similar challenges were launched?