Poor DVLA records causing problems - for parking companies.

J63320

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/apr/23/ghost-owners-uk-vehicles-in-use-without-proper-records-dvla

This article in the Guardian reports that the DVLA do not have records of the owners (surely they mean keepers, but never mind) of thousands of vehicles, which means that “speeding, hit and runs and worse” are going unpunished. This is scandalous - something must be done!
But how do we know this? It’s all down to a Freedom of Information request submitted by those wonderful altruistic people whose only concern is road safety - wait for it - the British Parking Association. They even seem to have persuaded an MP to take up their case.

James_Poisson

Well the DVLA have been pretty useless for years, but a couple of years ago there was a discussion on here of a "company" that set itself up to stop parking tickets getting to you by registering your vehicle through a Scottish holding address that was soon nipped in the bud.

flaneurs_lobster

18,000 out of 42 million registered vehicles (0.04%) doesn't seem to be a particularly high proportion.

Guess the concern is that those which are not correctly registered are more likely to be involved in dangerous or criminal activity (or not paying parking charges).

Kaizen2024

The industry stats show it’s more like 15-20% of vehicles that are incorrectly registered.

born_again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665380/poor-dvla-records-causing-problems-for-parking-companies

So unless people update them (quite common going by threads in parking board) DVLA will never know.

So how can you blame DVLA for any failure by Keeper/Owner to advise then of change. Never mind the blatant people who tell someone selling a car, Don't worry we will do it all for you. When it takes minutes to do it online.

Half_way

It also makes you wonder how many of these untraceable plates are down to ANPR read errors such as recording an M for a W B for R and so on.

That issue is reported occasionally on here, and if this place is merely an insignificant tip of the iceberg in terms of PPC issues around ANPR Then its easy to assume the problem of bad ANPR and automated systems is much greater

kryten3000

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974461#Comment_81974461

That's not a fair comparison. 0.04% untraceable is not the same as incorrectly registered.

LoneStarState

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974922#Comment_81974922

I equally suspect they're trying to state that anyone that has a V5C registered at a different residential address to where a keeper may majority reside is "incorrectly registered". However, you do not have to have your V5C address as where you physically reside as long as it is an address at which you can be reached.

Coupon-mad

And because so many IPC firms target new residents moving into flats at residential estates (e.g. Philip Carr of VCS v Carr fame who had £9000 of unfair PCNs all sent to a known to be old address) the operators know EXACTLY what they are doing by opting not to affix windscreen PCNs.

They know full well that a new resident cannot possibly have yet updated their V5C on day one (or even week one).

So what do the PPCs do?

Act fairly?

No chance.

The jolly wheeze is to deliberately not affix PCNs to car windscreens over a period of days and deliberately get known out of date addresses from the DVLA. Then blame the resident…