More than £500MILLION worth of fines were given out by private parking firms in just six months

In the last half of 2022 alone, parking companies have handed out a record half a billion pounds in fines – an increase of almost 25 per cent.

From July to December last year, some 5,644,020 fines were handed out, data shows, up from 4,554,378 in the same period the year before – an increase of 1.1 million.

Motorists were hit with 8,320,399 tickets in the first nine months of 2022-23 – not far from the 8,564,764 for all of 2021-22.

With fines capped at £100, this means parking companies are on track to issue more than £1bn in fines by the end of this year. The figures refer to car parks operated by private companies, not municipalities.

It comes after the government withdrew key parts of a long-awaited code of conduct designed to protect drivers from “cowboy” operators.

Ministers relented after parking companies launched a judicial review of the proposals, which included cutting maximum fines from £100 to £50.

Along with plans to ban collection agencies from chasing motorists who fail to pay within a time limit, this seems unlikely to go through.

And there are fears that the bits of the Code that could survive — such as giving drivers a mandatory ten-minute grace period before companies can issue a fine and making signage clearer and less confusing — may not take effect until next year.

The idea is also to revise the appeals process by making it independent and giving drivers who contest tickets a fairer hearing.

It will come into effect at the end of this year. But it could be held up due to judicial review, according to sources in Whitehall.

The nation’s largest parking company, ParkingEye, was the most active, purchasing 1,608,997 plates from the DVLA between July and December to issue fines.

This was followed by Euro Car Parks Limited (1,011,740) and APCOA Parking (UK) Ltd (606,371).

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: ‘If only the rest of the economy flourished like the private parking sector, perhaps we would all feel more prosperous.

Private parking looks potentially to become a £1 billion a year business, if not already, with demands of up to £100 a time being sent to drivers at a rate of more than one every three seconds.

“There is broad agreement that the government should establish a regulatory framework for the industry, but it has been almost four years since the relevant law was passed. These numbers certainly suggest that action is needed today.”

Jack Cousens, the AA’s head of road policy, added: ‘Drivers are being aggressively attacked by parking companies trying to cover up their nests before new, long overdue regulations are applied to them.

“Ministers must act quickly to protect drivers from this outrageous behaviour.”