Pendle MP Gordon Prentice has welcomed the news that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is looking at an important change to the way it gives car parking companies access to drivers’ details.

Speaking from Westminster the MP said “Ever since the horror story with Mattthew Brough’s Effective Car Park Management deluged my office with complaints last year I have been pressing the Department of Transport to tighten up their system for supplying people and organisations with drivers’ personal data.”

“While information is only available electronically for members of the British Parking Association, who are governed by a code of practice, up to now non-members—amongst them some real cowboy companies—have been able to access records via  paper applications.”

“Now the Transport Minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, has told me that the DVLA is considering making it a requirement that all car parking companies applying for information, whether electronically or on paper, must be members of a DVLA Accredited Trade Association.

“This should help put a stop to some of the unscrupulous practices and is long overdue.”

Note to Editors:
Gordon Prentice’s Early Day Motion of 31 January 2008 reads

Effective Car Park Management
That this House notes with grave concern the plight of scores of people who have received multiple penalty notices couched in the most threatening terms from Effective Car Park Management (ECPM) for allegedly parking without authorisation on private land at the Lomeshaye Business Village in Pendle owned by Bizspace; notes that ECPM is registered at Companies House as MJB Car Park Management but that neither company is registered with the umbrella trade association for the parking enforcement industry, the British Parking Association; acknowledges that only members of the British Parking Association can request and receive data electronically from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA); is astonished to learn that the DVLA has been supplying Matthew Brough, the owner of ECPM, with personal data from the DVLA database on the grounds that the company's request is made by paper and not electronically and calls on the Government to close this loophole without delay; further believes that Bizspace should terminate its contract with Matthew Brough forthwith; and considers that Brough's business practices are wholly unacceptable and that he is a cheat and a fraudster and that the debt collectors mentioned in the parking tickets have no rights of entry or rights to seize goods and that anyone with a ticket who believes they have been entrapped by Brough should refuse to pay and insist on the matter going before the courts.