Government is planning legislation in the next session to clampdown on unpaid parking tickets which are costing millions in lost revenue.

Figures released in 2007, showed Government had lost almost $2.5 million in parking fines in three years by allowing more than 49,000 tickets to go unpaid.

Of the 117,794 parking tickets issued in the City of Hamilton in 2004, 2005 and 2006 only 68,091 or just under 58 percent were paid.

Attorney General Kim Wilson was unable to say yesterday how many tickets were still outstanding or how much was owed. But said added:"I can say however that I will be presenting a policy paper to Cabinet and tabling legislation to address the anomalies for the upcoming legislative session."

Parliament resumes in May and normally runs until around Cup Match. Recently Government introduced online payment of parking ticket fines via debit or credit card, but it has sparked concern that it was pointless considering there was no sanction for non-payment.

That problem was first revealed in January, 2004 by The Royal Gazette which uncovered that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unpaid parking tickets remained outstanding because of the failure to bring offenders to court.

Hamilton Mayor Sutherland Madeiros said this week that the Corporation's clamping initiative had helped curb the numbers of people trying to evade displaying parking vouchers.

"As a result of the lack of prosecutions some people were not bothering.

"But now we clamp cars it's certainly helped we can't control the payment of parking tickets but we can control the clamping."

On the wider problem of unpaid tickets he said:"It's an easy one to remedy if the will and the desire was there."

He said there had been talks with Government about barring car re-licensing for those with outstanding tickets.

"We have spoken to two Attorney Generals about the issue of parking tickets and we haven't seen anything done to date.

"Linking it to TCD is just one suggestion."