DVLA IS BETRAYING DRIVERS WHO HAD ENTRUSTED IT WITH THEIR INFORMATION - BAKER

According to Times online website the DVLA is selling drivers’ names and addresses to clamping companies that break industry rules by charging drivers more than £500 for minor parking breaches.

The agency made more than £4 million last year by selling the details of 1.6 million drivers. It sold 900 names and addresses to Newline Securities and Parking Control Management, both of which have repeatedly double-charged drivers for parking breaches and inflated bills by adding spurious charges.

Newline left a family stranded overnight after seizing a car and refusing to allow the owner to retrieve his house keys. PCM charged an elderly couple £375 after they parked for 30 minutes outside a boarded-up office.

The agency has continued to sell drivers’ details to the companies despite being aware of their behaviour. This contradicts the agency’s claim that it carefully vets companies seeking access to the vehicle register. The agency also claims that it denies access to companies that have breached the industry code on parking enforcement.

Parking companies seek drivers’ names and addresses when they have been unable to clamp a vehicle. They use closed-circuit television to read numberplates and, having obtained the owner’s details from the DVLA, send demands for payment in the post.

If the driver fails to pay, the companies multiply the charge and send debt collectors to people’s homes. There is no right of appeal to an independent body, as there is for parking fines incurred on the public highway.

Newline charged Panos Eliades £532 to retrieve his car after he parked on a private road in North London. Newline charged separate fees for clamping and removal, even though the BPA code states that only one fee can be imposed if the car is removed within three hours of being clamped.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary, Norman Baker said: “The DVLA is betraying drivers who had entrusted it with their information.”

On 22 May the RAC released a report into ‘cowboy’ car clampers, and Norman Baker said at the time: “The Government has allowed an unfair, two-tier system to develop where council car parks are regulated but cowboy clampers operate on private ones.”

“Unsuspecting drivers who find themselves ripped off by unscrupulous private clampers have nowhere to turn for help.

“Clamping on private land has been outlawed in Scotland and it is time that it was banned in England too.”