Around half a million of which came from parking fines. A tidy sum of extra cash you might have imagined. You would be wrong.

For when the income and expenditure columns are added together there is still a deficit of £120,000. That will now be recouped from council tax. In other words our pockets.

The council took over on-street parking enforcement from the police in 2006. And it dramatically increased the number of traffic attendants.

So did too few people use council-run car parks and traffic bays? Did this extended family of attendants fail to hand out enough tickets to illegal parkers? Or did people decide it is too much trouble bringing their cars to town?

It could be any one or a combination of all three. The words of Dickens's Mr Micawber spring to mind.

He said: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six pence, result misery."

Someone needs a lesson in mathematics. Or perhaps they believe something will turn up.