Parking tickets rise tenfold to 6.4million as ministers are urged to crack down on 'cowboy fines'

The number of parking tickets issued to drivers has risen by nearly 10 times over the past decade, new data shows, as ministers are being urged to crack down on "cowboy fines".

Some 1.48m vehicle keeper records were requested by private parking companies in just the first quarter of 2018, a rise of 14 per cent on the previous year, according to RAC analysis of Government data. If this increase continues then an estimated 6.44m parking tickets will be issued in the current financial year, the motoring research charity said. This compares to 687,000 parking fines in the year 2008/9.

Motorists face charges of as much as £100 for contraventions such as overstaying after parking companies obtain records from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to chase vehicle owners over alleged infringements in private car parks such as at shopping centres, leisure facilities and motorway service areas.

Steve Gooding, RAC Foundation director, 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 backing a Private Member's Bill which would lead to the introduction of a code of conduct for private car park operators. Tory former minister Sir Greg Knight's Parking (Code of Practice) Bill passed its committee stage in the House of Commons last month. Its next step is the Commons' report stage scheduled for November 23.

Mr Gooding said: "Drivers will be pleased that Sir Greg Knight's bill has cleared another parliamentary hurdle in the hope that it won't be too long before some much-needed regulatory oversight is brought to bear on the industry."

The biggest purchaser of data in the first quarter of 2018/19 was ParkingEye Ltd, which requested 388,000 records. In July, Capita PLC agreed to sell the firm to Macquarie for £235million.

This is more than quadruple the £58million that Capita paid for ParkingEye in 2013.

The DVLA charges private firms £2.50 per record, meaning the agency could collect more than £16million during 2018/19.

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