DVLA makes more than £150,000 a week selling UK Driver’s Data

Published Date: 19th Apr 2016

New figures released show that the DVLA are selling our data to private parking companies at a huge profit, and it’s all legal somehow?

• DVLA make more than most premiership footballers selling our private information
• The Government Branch made over £8,000,000 in 2015 alone
• Money comes from private parking companies chasing motorists for fines

The DVLA are legally allowed to pass this data to registered parking companies, this is information that would usually be covered under the Data protection Act. The huge database of over 35 million vehicles is being used as a highly profitable opportunity by the government.

Most of the requests come from private parking companies, operating out of supermarket, hospital and retail car parks. Many different systems are used – from number plate recognition to demanding that your registration number is put into a machine and if you forget, expect a £70 fine through the post.

DVLA charges £2.50 a time for our data

Historic figure uncovered by a freedom of information act shows that the DVLA have been making money from our data for a long time. In 2008 they made £1.3m, in 2011 that figure grew to £2.9 million, then to £6.1m in 2014 and most recently a figure of £8.3m for 2015. Through this scheme of selling UK driver data, the DVLA has made just under £32m over the last 8 years and that is set to hit £40m by the end of 2016.

A spokesman for the DVLA explained “it does not aim to profit from selling drivers' details and that its fees only cover the cost of providing the information”.

He went on to say: “We take our responsibility to protect information extremely seriously and we have robust safeguards in place to ensure data is used correctly”.

“If we become aware of any issues, we will investigate and take swift action where appropriate.”