The RAC Foundation has attacked North Somerset Council and other local authorities for making “eye-watering” profits on car parking charges.

For 2014/15, councils in England declared a record surplus on parking income – which is defined as total income from charges and fines less the operating costs of the parking business – of almost £700 million. In North Somerset, the total declared surplus was £1.186 million.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation who collected the figures, said: “The financial sums involved in local authority parking are huge and the overall profits eye-watering. And once again the year-on-year direction of travel is upwards.

“The legal position is that parking charges are to be used as a tool for managing traffic. But with local government budgets under ever-greater pressure the temptation to see them as a fund-raiser must be intense.”

North Somerset Councillor Mike Bell, who is leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition group, commented: “North Somerset Council is mid-table in terms of comparisons with other councils when it comes to total car parking income.

“However, that masks the great injustice in North Somerset which is that almost all the parking revenue comes from on-street pay and display and off-street car parks in Weston-super-Mare, whilst parking is free in almost every other town and village in the district.

“Weston is the overworked golden goose of North Somerset and it is high time that we saw more of that revenue collected in the town actually invested in the town.”