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Personal firms issued 17 per cent extra parking tickets to UK drivers over the previous 12 months, newly revealed figures present.
The sharp rise comes because the delay in implementing a legally backed code of conduct for the sector reached seven years.
An unprecedented 16.9 million tickets had been issued by non-public corporations within the 12 months to the tip of March, in keeping with an evaluation of presidency knowledge by the Press Affiliation and motoring analysis charity the RAC Basis.
That represents a rise from 14.4 million a 12 months earlier, and 6.8 million recorded in 2018/19.
The parking sector has attributed this growth to the next variety of automotive parks coming beneath energetic administration.
With particular person penalties reaching as much as £100, the entire day by day price to drivers might exceed £4.6 million at present charges.
Personal parking companies have been accused of utilizing deceptive and complicated indicators, aggressive debt assortment and unreasonable charges.
Many drivers have been despatched tickets they declare are unfair due to the best way some cost machines function.
A Invoice to allow the introduction of a code of observe for the business obtained royal assent in March 2019.
This code, as a result of come into power throughout Britain by the tip of 2023, included halving the cap on tickets for many parking offences to £50, making a fairer appeals system, and banning using aggressive language on tickets.
However it was withdrawn by the Conservative authorities in June 2022 after a authorized problem by parking firms.
A brand new session on the code by the present Labour authorities closed in September 2025.
The evaluation of parking tickets was based mostly on the variety of information obtained from the Driver and Automobile Licensing Company (DVLA) by firms chasing automobile house owners for alleged infringements in non-public automotive parks, akin to at buying centres, leisure amenities and motorway service areas.
They don’t embody council-run automotive parks.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Basis, stated: “Within the interval since parliament unequivocally recognised the necessity for reform of the non-public parking business, some 76 million tickets have been issued in complete – a mean of properly over two for each automotive within the nation.
“Andy Burnham has loads of massive issues to fret about, but when his authorities might get spherical to fixing this downside, hundreds of thousands of drivers would have one much less factor on their minds.”
Some 204 parking administration companies requested automobile proprietor information in 2025/26.
ParkingEye was probably the most energetic, shopping for 2.5 million information.
Personal firms are charged £2.50 per file by the DVLA.
The company says its charges recuperate the price of offering the knowledge and it doesn’t make any cash from the method.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Native Authorities was approached for a remark.
