EALING has given out more parking fines in one year than any other London borough - with a massive 55 per cent rise on the previous 12 months.

The figures, revealed in Philip's new street atlas published today, also show Ealing has won the dubious award of having the highest number of bus lane offences - 70,000 people being clobbered in one year - 45 per cent higher than anywhere else in London.

Leading road traffic expert and author Stephen Mesquita said the numbers showed the borough was simply "trying generate income" from the fines.

"I cannot believe that given similar boroughs have decreased their parking fines by up to 55 per cent, that there are more offences being committed in Ealing," he said.

"People in Ealing are being targeted. That is such a huge increase in fines compared to some other borough increases, which in some cases are just 4 per cent.

"You have to ask is it really to keep the streets of Ealing free from motorists, or just a self-sustaining investment to raise money for the borough and its private contractors?"

The latest figures, which ran until March 2006, coincide with revelations that Ealing's last Labour administration had been paying incentives to wardens to issue fines.

Under the former leadership, which changed when the Conservatives took power last May, wardens received bonuses for hitting motorists with tickets.

The deal between the contractors and the Labour group exposed by the Ealing Times in October, had never been made public before.

It led to a change in contractors and a review of operating procedures.

Mr Mesquita said: "You can't absolutely prove they were trying to generate income from it, but it looks like it from the figures.

"Ealing has decided that parking fines are a good thing and both residents and visitors to Ealing are paying for it."

Under the last deal Labour paid contractor Vinci Park Ltd £4.69 per ticket up to 170,000 tickets and £9.79 for each PCN above 170,000.

This offered a huge financial incentive for the contractor to issue as many tickets as possible and yet there were no penalties for issuing false tickets.

Cllr Stacey said the figures revealed in the Philip's survey was "an embarrassment".

"It is never pleasant to be top of a league table like that. You can do the maths: every ticket is about £50 to the council out of which contractors would be paid.

"It shows the policy of the council up until last year was more geared towards raising revenue than actual transport considerations."

He added: "As a borough we will always be issuing tickets to people who commit traffic offences but they have to be fair and should not be about issuing as many as possible."

The London-wide survey also revealed nearly seven out of ten people thought current fines were too expensive, and two thirds of those interviewed though traffic wardens were only "rarely" or "occasionally fair".

The traffic wardens were even "less popular than speed cameras" said the survey.

But Bassam Mafouz, shadow portfolio holder for transport, was sceptical about the figures. "I am not sure about these statistics and percentage increases," he said.

"Ealing has never raised money from parking fines as simply a money-making exercise.

"If we were simply trying to raise revue through issuing tickets, the figures would have been consistently high, not just in the last year."

He added: "We were one of the borough's who experimented with issuing PCNs for dangerous traffic offences such as moving into box junctions - which people recognise as important and we have had positive feed back about, which could account for some of the rise."

But despite the change in personnel and the Tories' promise wardens would be punished for giving out incorrect tickets, complaints in the last few months about wrongly-issued fines has been rife.

And in January problems with the parking department were compounded when hundreds of letters demanding payment for fines were accidentally sent out by Ealing Council, with furious residents spending up to 40 minutes in a queue trying to speak to customer services.