Drivers at increased risk of parking charges as car park firms ramp up activity

Motorists are more and more likely to get parking charges through the post, as car park operators are now accessing drivers’ records up to 33,000 times per day.

Car parking charges have long been the bane of motorists, with many hitting out at confusing signs, pushy demands for money and unfair fees.

This is Money has campaigned before for the Government to crack down on private parking sharks – with the move even getting the support of prime minister Rishi Sunak when he was local Government minister.

But now an Freedom of Information request by This is Money to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency reveals the massive growth in private parking firms dredging up motorists’ details with a view to sending them a charge for breaching terms of private land.

Rise: In 2022/23 instances where a driver’s details were accessed via the DVLA database rose  26.2% to £30.18million. Private parking firms make up the vast majority of these requests

To issue a fine, organisations such as the police and councils must make a request to the DVLA.

And to issue a parking charge (private parking firms do not have the power to issue fines), private parking firms have to do the same.

The DVLA holds the records on motorists required to link a car number plate to a physical address or individual, who can then be sent a demand in the post.

Each request to access its ‘keeper of a vehicle at the date of an event’ or ‘Kadoe’ database costs £2.50.

In the 2020/21 financial year the DVLA earned £13.18million from these requests, but that went up by 81 per cent per cent to £23.9million in 2021/22, according to our FOI request.

In 2022/23, it ballooned another 26.2 per cent to £30.18million.

Private parking firms make up the overwhelming majority of these requests, as the DVLA does not charge organisations such as the police or local authorities.

That means there were 5.2million requests in 2020/21, 9.5million in 2021/22 and 12million in 2022/23 – around 33,000 a day.

The most parking firms can issue a charge for is £100, with this often reduced if drivers pay within two or three weeks.

If every search resulted in a £100 fine, with no drivers appealing, this would mean motorists shelled out up to £520million in 2020/21 to more than £1billion in 2022/23.

However, not every data request leads to a charge, and many drivers choose to pay these charges within two or three weeks, leading to a discount.

A DVLA spokesman said: ‘While a fee is charged for requesting vehicle keeper details, this is set to recover the cost of providing the information.

‘This means that the cost is borne by those requesting the information and not passed onto the general taxpayer.’

An AA spokesman added: ‘Drivers need to learn, if they haven’t already, that nearly every road trip they make will be watched at some stage by a camera.

‘And it’s not just cameras run by traffic or parking enforcement. A mistake could be filmed on the mobile phone of a passer-by and sent to an enforcement authority to action.

‘Most drivers don’t throw themselves into bus lanes like lemmings, stop in yellow boxes for the kick of getting a ticket or park over the line to risk losing, for some, a day’s wages.

‘Many make a mistake and pay for it big time because camera enforcement rarely exercises discretion.’

What is the future for parking charges?

The Government at one point was very close to bringing in tough new rules for private car park firms.

These rules, the Private Parking Code of Practice, would have capped charges at 50 per cent if paid within 14 days – meaning drivers faced a £50 fine, not a £100 one.

It would also have brought in a code of practice for car park operators and a better appeals process.

The first draft of the code was published in February 2022. But it was then pulled four months later after strong objections by parking firms, who argued it would mean they would lose money and staff.

The code was meant to be live by the end of 2023, but the Government is still deciding what to do.

A spokesman for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: ‘We are carefully considering the responses to our recent Call for Evidence on the Private Parking Code of Practice and next steps will be set out in due course.’

A spokesman for the British Parking Association trade body said: ‘The parking sector manages millions of parking acts every day and witnesses the impact of the minority of drivers who park causing inconvenience to others, such as blocking spaces, parking in blue badge zones, or causing a nuisance to motorists that park with care and attention.

‘The system has to be robust enough to try and deter this kind of behaviour, we have plenty of evidence to show what happens when it is not effectively managed.’

Parking firms say that the number of searches for drivers is rising because of more cars being on the road, more car parks being opened, persistent bad parking by a small number and the charges not being high enough to deter improper parking.

Pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 may also have caused some of the dramatic spike seen in the figures between 2020/21 and 2021/22, but not the increase in 2022/23.