That’s according to car finance specialist Zuto following freedom of information requests to eight of the UK's largest councils.

The results show that over the 12 months between 1 August 2014 and 31 July 2015, 170,127 tickets were contested of which 46,122 (27%) ended successfully with refunds totalling over £3.2m.

Looking at individual councils, the most tickets were issued by Edinburgh with 231,556 tickets (worth almost £14m). The London Borough of Ealing was second (£12.4m worth of fines), Birmingham was third (£8.6m), Glasgow fourth (£7m) and Enfield fifth (£4.6m).

Bristol was found to be the council which dished out the most hotly-contested parking tickets, with around one in ten of just under 85,000 parking fines issued by the local authority ending in successful challenges.

In response, James Wilkinson, CEO of Zuto, said: "While, as drivers, we should accept responsibility when we have broken parking regulations, our research suggests that there are a lot of unfair tickets being slapped on windscreens around the UK. With only one in five parking tickets actually being contested, there are probably a lot more drivers who are paying unfair fines."

The company has also published a post on its website on how to appeal unfair parking tickets.