COUNCILS made an extra £800,000 on parking last year and have been urged to spend the surplus on improving transport around Oxford.

Oxfordshire’s six local authorities made £8.1m in 2016-17 compared to £7.3m the previous year, all of which must be spent on transport.

Campaigners said the increase suggested more people were using park and rides and backed plans for more of them further out.

Oxfordshire County Council - which runs park and rides at Thornhill, Water Eaton and Redbridge - enjoyed the biggest rise, with income outweighing expenditure by £2.6m.

Juliet Blackburn, head of transport for Oxford Civic Society, said the park and rides were being better used across the city.

She said: “The increase suggests that and I would say they are being used more - Water Eaton for example always had a high number of spaces compared to now.

“Of course it’s too early to tell what impact the Westgate will have on where people park but the traffic certainly hasn’t been as bad as first thought.”

She added that the money needed to be spent in the right places and called for more park and rides further out.

She said: “We have been involved with discussions over park and rides and we are interesting in one being built at Cumnor.

“We prefer this to expanding Seacourt into the floodplain and it would work if we could get a bridge, for example, onto the proposed Osney Mead redevelopment.”

The county council’s long term transport strategy proposes park and rides at Eynsham, Cumnor, Kidlington, Sandford and Lodge Hill.

The money Oxford City Council made from its car parks fell by around £10,000 to £3.7m - the lowest total in the past five years.

In 2014-15, the last year there was a recognised shopping centre open in Oxford, that figure was as high as £4.8m.

In September the city council voted to lower its prices to align with the Westgate Centre - it said the five per cent reduction would hit income by £43,000 but expected the number of visitors to still bring them a profit.

West Oxfordshire District Council, which provides free parking across the district, was the only authority to lose money.