Database May Get 100,000 Drivers Clamped

Daily Mail, Thursday, 17 th November 2005
By Anil Dawar

Drivers who do not pay their parking fines could face having their cars clamped or towed away – anywhere in Britain.

Plans for a National Parking Offenders' Database have been put forward to enable local authorities to pool information on non-payers.

The computerised system would allow councils across the country to co-operate in their efforts to force motorists to pay their outstanding fines.

Currently, there are an estimated 100,000 drivers with unpaid parking fines – half of them living in London.

Britain's motorists paid more than £1billion in parking fines last year at the rate of one ticket every five seconds.

The national database has been proposed by Keith Bradbury, chief executive of the British Parking Association and a member of a Department of Transport working group.

Under the scheme, offenders' cars will be clamped or towed away until the outstanding fine is paid off.

Mr Banbury said motorists' details and those of their cars should be logged on to a central database.

Hand-held computers will then flag up wanted drivers when an attendant is issuing another parking ticket – wherever they are in the country.

That means a motorist who evades paying a fine to Westminster City Council, for example, could be clamped in Aberdeen and then forced to hand over the money to get his or her car back.

Paying for the clamp, towing-away fees and storage could cost more than £200 before the parking tickets are taken into consideration.

Mr Banbury said: “Persistent parking offenders cause problems for all communities as they often ignore the regulations to the detriment of those who park correctly, including disabled drivers. By creating a national database, parking attendants all over the country will be able to act quickly, to the benefit of the general public.”

The idea was first proposed by Mr Banbury when he took over as head of the BPA in 2002. The organisation represents the different groups involved in the car parking industry, including car park operators, local authorities and consultants.

But now as he is part of a working group looking at improved guidelines for parking enforcement, Mr Banbury hopes his idea could soon come to fruition.

Studies have shown that drivers who do not pay parking tickets are also likely to commit other motoring offences – such as driving without a licence, insurance or a valid MOT certificate.

“Drivers often throw their tickets away because they have failed to register or insure their cars and believe they cannot be traced,” Mr Banbury said. “By creating a national offenders' database, parking attendants all over the UK will be able to act quickly.”

Last year, overseas diplomats in London racked up unpaid parking fines of more than £750,000. Libya, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria were at the top of the Foreign Office's ‘name and shame' list of offenders.