New Private Parking Code of Practice laid in Parliament

The Private Parking Code of Practice was laid in Parliament on 20 October 2026, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced. The Code applies in England, Scotland and Wales¹. It gives drivers a guaranteed five minutes to decide whether to park and ten minutes to leave once their session ends, and sets out when charges must be cancelled on appeal¹.

Under the Code, charges will be cancelled on appeal for honest mistakes, such as stopping briefly to check directions, and for situations outside the driver's control, including a medical emergency, a breakdown or a broken ticket machine¹. For smaller slip-ups, such as forgetting a parking permit, entering the wrong vehicle registration or forgetting to confirm the registration in the machine, drivers face a maximum charge of £20 on appeal¹. The Code also freezes the maximum parking charge at £100¹.

Operators that do not comply risk losing access to DVLA data, which the government says would make it far more difficult to identify a registered owner to pursue for payment¹. The Code also establishes a fully independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board, and requires operators to report data on the charges they issue and how appeals are handled¹. The process to set up the board will begin once the Code comes into force¹.

The changes follow a public consultation that ran from July to September 2025 and received 4,526 responses from the public and industry¹. The government said just under 17 million private parking charges were issued in the UK last year¹. This is Money reported a record 16.9 million charges in the year to March 2026, a 360 per cent rise from 2015/16²; Sky News reported the number rose from 14.4 million to 16.9 million over the year to the end of March³.

The government also said car clocking, the practice of winding back odometers, will be added to the banned practices list under Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The change applies to businesses selling cars to consumers¹.

Why it matters for households

The Code sets the terms on which private parking operators in England, Scotland and Wales can issue and pursue charges. Drivers who overstay by minutes, mistype a registration or cannot use a broken machine would have grounds to appeal, with cancellation required where evidence supports one of the scenarios in the Appeals Charter, and a £20 ceiling on charges for minor errors¹. The £100 maximum charge is frozen rather than reduced¹. The government has not reported the date the Code takes effect; it says ministers will bring it into force as soon as possible after parliamentary scrutiny¹.

What happens next

Parliament will scrutinise the Code before ministers bring it into force¹. The government said it intends to consult further on the remaining Competition and Markets Authority recommendations after publication¹, and to consult as soon as possible next year on private parking debt recovery fees, including whether to cut an existing £70 cap or scrap the fees altogether¹. Sky News reported that a unified appeals body and a ban on adding debt recovery fees on top of parking charge notices were not included³. The RAC called the changes "a step in the right direction to protect drivers from poor practices", while the AA said charges would need to be stopped from being issued in the first place where there was no wrongdoing³. Further detail is available in the guide to regulation and policy.