Parking tickets to hit record 6.5m a year

MENACE OF THE NEW PARKING COWBOYS From the Mail, July 2014

PRIVATE parking firms are on course to dish out a record 6.5million tickets this year, a report has found.

The DVLA received demands for 1.48million sets of vehicle-keeper records in the first quarter of 2018/19 – an increase of 14 per cent compared with last year.

There were just 687,000 requests a decade ago, according to the RAC Foundation. The figures, which cover April to June, suggest more than 16,000 motorists are targeted every day.

The DVLA generates vast income by selling motorists’ information for £2.50 a vehicle. Last year, it raised £14.1million by selling 5.65million sets of records.

The latest figures will once again raise fears that drivers’ details are being widely misused, with motorists unfairly punished for minor infringements.

It will also fuel concerns among cam- paigners and MPs that such firms have become too aggressive. Drivers have told of being landed with huge fines for returning to their cars a few minutes late.

Firms such as ParkingEyeLtd – the biggest purchaser of data so far this year – commonly operate in hospitals and high streets.

RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding said: ‘Motorists might well be asking what is going on when the number of records being sought by private parking companies has shot up yet again.

‘Numbers like these suggest that something, somewhere, is going wrong.’

The Government has committed to back a Private Member’s Bill which would lead to the introduction of a code of conduct for private car park operators.

The DVLA says its charges are set to recover the cost of providing the information and it does not make any money from the process.