bunch of theving bastards....
“The DVLA charges £2.50 per address, and the most common request is from private parking companies pursuing people for payments.”
DVLA selling this info to private car parks in itself breaks the rules they set out themselves.
In my experience as a campaigner for fair play for motorists, most of these private car parking companies operate illegally. They issue so called “parking fines” where they have no right to. All they can do is to issue the driver of the car an invoice for parking. Most of them make the parking invoices look like official penalty charge notices as issued by a traffic warden. This is highly illegal. As set out in section 40 parts c and d of the administration of justice act 1970
The Administration of Justice Act 1970.
Section 40 of the act provides that a person commits an offence if, with the object of coercing another person to pay money claimed from the other as a debt due under contract, he or she:
(c) falsely represent themselves to be authorised in some official capacity to claim or enforce payment;
(d) utters a document falsely represented by him to have some official character or purporting to have some official character which he knows it has not.
As the car parking companies are trying to gain the details of the registered keeper of the car to collect payment on a invoice, as the registered keeper may not be the driver of the car at the time the parking invoice was issued, and the registered keeper of the car is under no obligation to tell the private parking company the identity of the driver at the time (please note, this is not the case for official penalty charge notices issued by a traffic warden)
On The form the car park owner has to fill in to gain the information of the registered keeper, they have to state that the registered keeper is the person who owes the money. As this is not the case, they are telling lies on the form and gaining the information by false pretences. DVLA have been informed of this practice and the illegal nature of some of the private car parking companies, but they don’t ever respond, just keep on collecting the £2.50 per enquiry.
My advice to anyone who gets a private car parking ticket (read: invoice) is to throw it in the bin... do not respond to any letter they send, no matter how threatening it gets. They will not take you to court for a county court judgement, they would lose.
See www.ticketfighter.co.uk/private.htm for more info.
it could be argued that DVLA in continuing to collect money from these companies, knowing that they are acting illegally, are themselves committing a crime of money laundering and conspiracy to obtain money by deception... i would love to see that one in court.