UK parking ticket statistics 2026: DVLA keeper requests and POPLA appeals

16.9 million requests in 2025/26, up from 6.9 million in 2018/19

Parking companies made 16,921,728 keeper-record requests in 2025/26: +17.7% on 2024/25 and 2.45 times the 2018/19 figure. Requests have risen every year since the 2020/21 low. That is our sum of every row DVLA files under “Car Parking Management”; DVLA itself publishes no total.

Requests by company

188 companies made at least one request in 2025/26. The five largest — ParkingEye, APCOA Parking, Euro Car Parks, Horizon Parking and Smart Parking — made 51% of all requests.

What happens at appeal: POPLA and the IAS

If a parking company rejects your appeal, you can take it to an independent service for free: POPLA for members of the British Parking Association (BPA), or the IAS for members of the International Parking Community (IPC). Not sure which applies? Use the BPA or IPC lookup.

In POPLA's words, an appeal is not contested when “either party has withdrawn from the appeal process before its conclusion”. The 107,202 appeals resolved in the year is more than the 104,349 submitted because the figures count what happened during the year: an appeal submitted in one year can be decided or withdrawn in the next.

POPLA outcomes by operator

Operators with at least 100 decided appeals in the year, regions (England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) combined. “Not contested” includes withdrawals by either party — POPLA does not split it by operator. “Per 1,000 requests” compares each operator's resolved POPLA appeals with its DVLA keeper-record requests over the same October–September year. The full breakdown is in POPLA's appendix.

Swipe the table sideways for more columns →

² Smart Parking is now on the IPC register (checked 27 September 2026), so new appeals go to the IAS. POPLA's figures cover appeals made while it was a BPA member, so we don't show a per-1,000 ratio.

The IAS publishes totals only

The Independent Appeals Service handles appeals against IPC members. Its annual report for the same year (1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025) gives service-wide figures: 34,383 disputes received and 25,476 accepted as cases. Before adjudication, 7,888 appeals were conceded by the parking operator and 1,019 by motorists. The report gives no split of adjudication outcomes and no figures by operator, so IPC members cannot be compared in the way POPLA's table allows. Source: IAS Annual Report 2024–2025 (Schedule 5), verified 27 September 2026.

Method notes

• What is counted. DVLA's KADOE (“keeper at date of event”) file lists every organisation that requests keeper details, by month. We count the rows DVLA files under “Car Parking Management”. Financial years run April to March. DVLA publishes no total, so the headline is our sum of its rows; anyone can reproduce it from the source file.
• Company lines. DVLA lists some companies under more than one name, because a company can have more than one link to the service or change its name. We combine rows that differ only in legal suffix, spacing or a “2nd link” marker, and a short list of documented renames and trading names (for example, the three National Car Parks rows). Rows an agent files “on behalf of” a parking company are credited to that company; rows filed on behalf of a council, university or airport stay separate. Merging can change the ranking, so check the combined rows (hover a name, or see the CSV) before quoting a position.
• One exception to DVLA's categories. MET Parking Services: DVLA filed the 2025/26 row (180,690 requests) under a different category from every earlier year. We show it in the company's line so the company's trend is complete, but not in the headline total. Counting it would make the year-on-year rise +18.9% rather than +17.7%.
• Requests, not tickets. DVLA's notes say the volumes are enquiries, not releases of keeper information, and can include the same vehicle more than once.
• POPLA. POPLA's year runs 1 October to 30 September. We combine each operator's regional rows and spelling variants, and show “% allowed” only where at least 50 appeals were decided. POPLA's per-operator table of submitted appeals is missing some operators (its listed rows add up to 96,994, against a stated total of 104,349), so we compare operators on resolved appeals instead.
• Per 1,000 requests. Resolved POPLA appeals (decided plus not contested) divided by the operator's DVLA requests from October 2024 to September 2025, built from DVLA's monthly figures so both cover the same twelve months. It is a ratio of two published counts, not a rate of anything that happened to a particular ticket.

Questions about the numbers

How many parking tickets are issued in the UK?

No official body publishes a count of private parking tickets. The closest published measure is DVLA's count of keeper-record requests: parking companies made 16,921,728 in 2025/26 (April to March), +17.7% on 2024/25. A request is not a ticket — DVLA notes the same vehicle can be looked up more than once — and council Penalty Charge Notices are not included.

What is POPLA's success rate?

POPLA does not publish a single success rate. In the year to 30 September 2025 it decided 67,680 appeals and allowed 14,578 (21.5%). A further 34,502 appeals ended because the parking operator did not contest them. Together, 45.8% of the 107,202 appeals POPLA resolved in the year were allowed or not contested by the operator.

Do appeal outcomes differ between parking companies?

Yes. Among operators with at least 1,000 appeals decided by POPLA in the year to September 2025, the share POPLA allowed ranged from 7.5% (UK Parking Control) to 43.4% (NCP). These are outcomes across all of an operator's appeals — every appeal still turns on its own facts and evidence.

Why count DVLA keeper-record requests?

They are the only company-by-company figure a public body publishes. To post a parking charge to a vehicle's registered keeper, a private parking company requests the keeper's name and address from DVLA and pays a fee for each request, so the requests show how much each company pursues keepers by post. The IAS, which hears appeals against IPC members, publishes only service-wide totals.

Can I use this data?

Yes. DVLA publishes its figures under the Open Government Licence v3.0, so credit DVLA as the source. If you use our company groupings, totals or calculations, please link to this page. The CSV download contains our DVLA-based table, including monthly figures.

Cite this page

Journalists and researchers are welcome to use these figures. Please credit DVLA and POPLA as the sources, and link here if you use our company lines or calculations.

Sources, licence and downloads

• DVLA — Who DVLA shares data with, KADOE volumes (.ods), published 19 August 2026, verified 27 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• POPLA — POPLA Annual Report 2025 - Appendix, 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.
• IAS — The Independent Appeals Service (IAS) Annual Report 2024 – 2025, 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.
• Download — uk-parking-keeper-requests.csv: every company line with annual and monthly DVLA figures and the DVLA rows combined into it.

DVLA updates its figures every quarter; we refresh this page when it does. Last updated 27 September 2026.