Private parking firms are on track to issue nearly 14.5m tickets this year, a 12% increase in 12 months.
In the first half of the 2024/25 financial year, requests to the DVLA from car park management companies for vehicle keeper details reached 7.2m, the equivalent of 41,000 a day. During the same period a year earlier that number was 6.5m.
Just five parking management companies are resposible for more than half of the requests, with one company putting in a whopping 1.1m data requests, 16% of the total.
If the trend continues for the remainder of the year, nearly 14.5m drivers will have been sent £100 parking charge notices for alleged parking contraventions. That's the equivalent of £1.4bn, which is more than double the number from 2018-19.
That year is significant because it was the year before the Government passed an Act of Parliament that intended to clamp down on rogue private parking operators. However, the Private Parking Code of Practice was withdrawn in 2022 following legal challenges leading to private parking companies being unmonitored and able to issue far more parking charges than they were previously able to.
There have been numerous high-profile stories recently about parking charges, with one driver eventually taken to court over a debt that spiralled to £1906 after taking longer than five minutes to pay for parking while in Derby. That case was subsequently dropped following the publicity and intervention by a local MP.
The DVLA data shows that just five companies are responsible for making nearly half of the 7.2m requests to the DVLA for vehicle keeper details.
ParkingEye (1.1m), Euro Car Parks (891,600), Horizon Parking (439,896), Smart Parking (423,809) and APCOA Parking (367,465) made 45% of all the requests, while the top 10 companies made nearly two-thirds (64%, the equivalent of 4.6m) requests to the DVLA. With each request costing £2.50 that's also a pretty significant amount of money generated for the DLVA as well.
Simon Williams, head of policy for the RAC, who compiled the data said: “It’s very concerning that private parking firms are growing and on track to issue a record 14.5m parking charge notices to drivers in the space of just 12 months. As drivers don’t generally set out to break the rules, we fear more may be being treated unfairly by private parking companies that are still operating without government scrutiny.
“Unfortunately, despite legislation being passed more than five years ago to prevent poor industry conduct, the Private Parking Code of Practice has never come into force due to a legal challenge.
“Eight-in-10 drivers we surveyed were frustrated by this, but we know the Government is committed to getting the official code across the line. We believe this needs to happen as quickly as possible, particularly as the number of parking charge notices issued has more than doubled since the law was passed to introduce the code in 2019.
“If anyone feels they’ve been wrongly told to pay £100 by a car park management company, they should challenge it. With firms prone to sending debt collection letters after 28 days and then threatening court action, we realise the process can be pretty daunting, which is why we’ve published a step-by-step guide on what to do at each stage. We hope this will help drivers get unjustified parking charge notices cancelled.”
