Drivers’ £840m bill in tickets-code delay

PARKING firms issued one ticket every four seconds last year, costing drivers up to £840million. Companies handed out 24% more tickets in 2019/20 compared with the previous 12 months, according to the RAC – up from 6.8million to 8.4m. Parking companies are using the DVLA to track down drivers who are alleged to have flouted the rules at shopping centres, leisure facilities and motorway service areas. Motorists are then left counting the cost of a £100 ticket. Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Anyone who received a private parking ticket last year would have been in plentiful company – yet again the number of keeper addresses released by the DVLA to private parking companies has shot up, this time by almost a quarter.

“To put the numbers in context, if every one of the 8.4m releases came with a ticket to the next Glastonbury Festival, Michael Eavis would have to re-run the event over 60 times to fit everyone in.”

In March last year MP Sir Greg Knight’s Parking (Code of Practice) Bill aimed to impose a single set of rules on rogue parking firms. But plans to put a code of conduct into have still to be finalised.

Mr Gooding said: “The hard graft of creating a new code of practice for the industry is currently under way.

“But the code is just one part of the new framework that needs to be put in place, including a single appeals body and independent scrutiny of the private parking trade associations and their members.”

The DVLA charges private firms with a £2.50 charge per record to cover the cost of giving out the information. place