Private car parks cash in after DVLA sells off data from millions of drivers

THE number of drivers’ details being sold to private car park firms has soared in the past decade, figures show, as shoppers were warned last night to be “very wary”.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) sold 1.4 million vehiclekeeper records to the firms in just three months this year, almost 13 times more than the 112,000 issued in the same period a decade ago.

The DVLA charges £2.50 per record, suggesting the agency could earn more than £15 million from the process during the current financial year.

The figures are revealed as motoring groups warn that private car parking companies are gearing up for a “Christmas bonanza”.

Steve Gooding, RAC Foundation director, said: “We all like to think we will bag a bargain at this time of year, but our festive shopping could come at a very high price. Private parking firms are already issuing tickets at an unprecedented rate and if history is anything to go by they will be breaking yet more records in the weeks ahead.

“Drivers should be very wary of overstaying their welcome in private car parks by even a matter of moments, and they should not give these firms any other reason to come after them with demands for eye-watering sums which will spoil their Christmas. Private parking companies do not allow a grace period – even at Christmas.”

The companies operating in areas including supermarkets, retail parks and hospitals can track down car owners by requesting names and addresses from the DVLA, which allow them to send penalty charges worth up to £100. Parkingeye obtained the largest amount of data in the most recent quarter at 467,000 records. The data would usually be kept private under the Data Protection Act, but the DVLA is entitled to sell it on to a company accredited by their relevant Trade Association.

The latest figures are from the second quarter of this year and suggest the third will be a “bumper period” for parking firms, as it includes the run-up to Christmas and the New Year sales, the RAC Foundation warned. It estimates that the total number of records sold by the DVLA could exceed six million in 2017/18, up from 4.7 million during the previous 12 months.

The rise in the number of tickets issued has been partly attributed to reducing wheel clamping from 2012, which meant private land owners had to look to other forms of enforcement.

A DVLA spokesman said that they did not make any money from the sales as the £2.50 charge per record charge simply covered administration costs.