Private Parking Firms Issued a Record 16.9 Million Tickets Worth £4.6 Million a Day

• Private parking companies asked the DVLA for driver details a record 16.9 million times in the year to March 2026, enough charges to be worth £4.6 million a day if each one lands.
• The number of requests has climbed 148.5 percent since 2018/19, according to DVLA figures analysed by the RAC Foundation and the Press Association.
• Drivers can challenge a charge for free through POPLA or the Independent Appeals Service, and operators already drop thousands of cases rather than defend them in front of an adjudicator.

A Record Year for Private Parking Charges

Private parking firms applied to the DVLA for a vehicle keeper’s name and address 16.9 million times in the twelve months to March 2026, a record figure and a 17 percent jump on the year before. Each request is the first step toward sending a parking charge notice to a driver’s home. At £100 a charge, the industry standard, the total value of tickets generated this year works out at more than £4.6 million a day.

The figures come from an analysis of DVLA data carried out by the Press Association with the RAC Foundation, a transport research charity. They cover only private land: supermarket car parks, retail parks, hospital grounds and residential estates managed by parking contractors. Council-run car parks and on-street penalties issued by local authorities are counted separately and are not part of this total.

Requests have risen every year since 2018/19, when operators made 6.8 million applications. The 148.5 percent increase since then has tracked the spread of automatic number plate recognition cameras into car parks that used to rely on a human warden with a ticket machine. A camera at the entrance and exit of a car park can log every vehicle that overstays, parks without paying, or misreads a confusing sign, then forward the registration for a DVLA lookup without a person ever walking the rows.

Why the DVLA Hands Over Your Details

A private company has no automatic right to know who owns a car. The DVLA will only release a name and address to an operator that belongs to an accredited trade association, the British Parking Association or the International Parking Community, and that has signed a code of practice promising fair signage, proportionate charges and a working appeals route. In exchange for membership, the DVLA treats a request from that operator the same way it would treat one from the police investigating an unpaid congestion charge.

The system relies on the operator telling the truth about why it wants the data. Watchdog investigations over the past two years have found cases where cameras generated charges from signs that were obscured, from grace periods that were too short to read the terms, and from car parks where the stated tariff did not match what was charged. Each of those charges still triggered a DVLA request and still counts toward the 16.9 million total, whether or not the charge itself holds up to a challenge.

What a Private Parking Charge Actually Costs You

A typical charge starts at £100, discounted to £60 if paid within 14 days of the notice, then escalates if it is ignored. Operators can add debt recovery fees once a case goes to a collections agency, and in rare cases pursue it through the small claims court, where a lost case can add court costs on top of the original charge. None of this touches a driver’s licence. A private parking charge is a civil debt, not a fixed penalty notice, and carries no penalty points, because the land is private and the contract is between the driver and the landowner, not the state.

That distinction matters because it changes who a driver complains to. A council parking fine goes through the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. A private charge goes through POPLA, run by the trade body the operator belongs to, or the Independent Appeals Service for IPC members.

The Trade Body Rules Most Drivers Have Never Heard Of

POPLA’s own data shows operators withdraw a large share of cases the moment a driver files a formal appeal rather than let an independent adjudicator rule on the signage, the grace period or the tariff. A withdrawn case costs the driver nothing and leaves no mark anywhere. The catch is that most drivers pay the discounted £60 within the first fortnight simply to make the letters stop, without ever finding out whether the charge would have survived a challenge.

A single parking code of practice for the whole industry, with a lower cap on charges and a single appeals body, has been promised by government since 2019 under the Parking (Code of Practice) Act. It has been delayed repeatedly amid legal challenges from parking operators over the cap on charge levels, and no firm date for the new code has been set.

How to Challenge a Charge Before You Pay It

Check the operator’s name on the notice against the British Parking Association or International Parking Community member list. Photograph the signage at the time, including the tariff board and any text about grace periods, because operators often cannot produce their own photographic evidence months later. Appeal directly to the operator first, in writing, stating the specific defect: obscured signs, an inaccurate tariff, a grace period under the ten minutes most codes require, or a genuine reason for stopping such as a medical emergency or a breakdown. If the operator rejects the appeal, it must then offer an escalation to POPLA or the IAS depending on its membership, and that second-stage appeal is free and does not require a lawyer.

What Happens Next

Until a single code of practice takes effect, the number of DVLA requests looks set to keep climbing as more car parks switch from wardens to cameras. The RAC Foundation has called for the DVLA to publish a running breakdown of which operators make the most requests, so that drivers can see which car parks generate the most disputes before they park in them. For now, the paper trail from camera to charge to DVLA lookup stays largely invisible until the notice lands on a driver’s doormat.

Sources:

• Drivers issued a record 17 million private parking tickets
• Private parking data release surges 64 percent