Parking firms issued 4.4m tickets despite the pandemic
PARKING firms still issued 4.4 million penalty tickets in 12 months despite car use diving in the pandemic.
Drivers picked up 12,000 tickets every day in the 2020/21 financial year, said analysis by the RAC Foundation, even though journeys fell to as low as 22 per cent of normal levels.
The 4.4 million total was down from 8.4 million tickets in the previous 12 months.
Companies buy records from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to chase owners for alleged breaches in private car parks such as at shopping centres, leisure facilities and motorway service areas. Each ticket can cost up to £100.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “We’d have expected to see the number of keeper details being sought by the private parking sector falling quite dramatically. The muchreduced number still amounts to 12,000 per day.”
A total of 151 firms asked the agency for owner information in 2020/21.
The biggest buyer of details was ParkingEye with 975,559 records. The DVLA charges £2.50 per record to recover the cost of providing data.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said in March that it expected a single parking penalties appeals body to be launched by the middle of next year.