THE county's parking enforcement services did not break even last year - despite collecting around £4.6million in fines.

The figures add weight to the argument that wardens have deliberately targeted motorists in order to generate revenue.

And today one motoring organisation slammed Lancashire County Council for its stunning' failure' to make the scheme break even and said it had miscalculated when assessing how much to pay NCP for the service.

Lancashire County Council minutes reveal 136,000 fixed penalty notices were issued in the year to July under the Parkwise scheme.

Councillors have expressed concern that, assuming all the £30 fines were paid, the service, which has 67 wardens, generated £4million but was still running at a loss.

In Blackburn with Darwen £608,000 was collected on 20,000 tickets, but the cost of running the 20-strong warden team was £649,000.

But Blackburn with Darwen's scheme is different from Parkwise as it is run by the council's in-house team of wardens.

A spokesman for the Association of British Drivers said: "This is a stunning failure by the county council. Privatised parking is not working. Councils nationally appear to have negotiated contracts so poorly they are losing money."

He said the simple solution was to hand on parking enforcement back to the police, as was the case before September 2004 across Lancashire.

A county council spokesman said there were start up costs involved in the scheme and the number tickets issued did not necessarily equate to cash collected. He added: "A figure for the amount of revenue generated is being worked on at the moment."

And Coun Andy Kay, executive member for regeneration at Blackburn with Darwen, said: "While there is a shortfall in expected ticket revenue this indicates motorists are parking correctly."