Taxpayers are spending up to £600,000 a year to subsidise the cost of private parking firms getting drivers’ details from the DVLA so they can fine motorists. And that total subsidy pot may have topped £5million over the last eight years.

New figures obtained from a Freedom of Information request reveal that the DVLA loses 34p every time a parking company applies for the details of a car’s registered keeper.

The subsidy arises because the private firms pay £2.50 for documentation, which costs the DVLA £2.84 to handle. This year the agency has received 1.8million applications from private companies, costing the public purse around £612,000.

Reported by This is Money / Mail Online. You can read the full story here. 

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.