Exciting developments with the National Persistent Evader Database (NPED)

Guest article by Alan Wood, CEO of NPED

With over 25 years of experience in recovering Local Authority related debts, Alan Wood has undertaken a variety of roles, giving him a unique insight into all aspects of the sector.

During his time as an Enforcement Agent, he became increasingly aware of the number of warrants coming through for the same vehicles, or what we call Persistent Evaders. This prompted him to ask, “What else are they up to?” and “What do these multiple offenders mean to a community?”

Alan has been described as a campaigner, even an activist, driven by his persistence and passion to protect lawful motorists and bring these nuisance non-compliant vehicles out of the shadows and into the light.

“A really weird hobby”

This sparked a progressive period of industry consultation and research that now spans more than 10 years, or as his wife calls it “a really weird hobby”.

Despite two parliamentary round tables and numerous attempts to get the government to build a national database capable of holding hundreds of millions of records related to offending vehicle behaviour, his efforts fell on deaf ears.

Launching the National Persistent Evader Database

In July 2022, Alan decided enough was enough and he would do it himself, launching NPED Services Ltd. He set about finding a suitable IT partner to build this innovative and groundbreaking solution.

As the system and all the legal work around data sharing is now completed, the National Persistent Evader Database (NPED) is finally underway. This innovative system blends data on offending vehicle behaviour from across the parking sector into one, secure, user-friendly product.

How the NPED supports parking operations

Early identification of persistent evaders enables parking operations to make informed decisions around issuing or progressing a PCN for enforcement actions, saving on wasted processing costs and reducing write-off debt.

NPED runs as an added-value service through the PCN back-office provider, requiring no procurement and incurring no onboarding or license fee.

NPED is an automated segmentation tool built into the existing providers process and requires no external intervention or additional resources.

In addition to saving local authorities much-needed funds, NPED will establish the true scale of this growing issue, estimated to cost local authorities in excess of £1.5bn per year and rising, allowing for targeted enforcement actions against the worst offenders. This valuable intelligence can also be shared with other enforcement agencies and police.

NPED Ambassadors

Beyond being a game-changing piece of innovation, NPED aims to unite the sector as one voice. To this end, Alan has appointed 10 NPED Ambassadors, chosen for their expertise or affiliations.

Eight are what he describes as “the great and good of parking,” joined by two experienced and influential individuals from roads policing. NPED Ambassadors form the backbone of the steering group and help shape the direction of travel to ensure future development truly meets the needs of the users.

Winning the 2024 Parkex Innovation Award

With a record 30 entries into the Parkex Innovation Award in Coventry, NPED was thrilled to be shortlisted to the final 15. Each finalist pitched their innovation to a live judging panel at the BPA Live theatre.

Amid incredibly strong competition and some brilliant presentations, Alan and his team are very pleased to announce that they won!

Campaign for change

NPED now plays a key role in a project aimed at understanding the true state of our vehicle community within our towns and cities, using camera data from 500 car parks across England, Scotland, and Wales.

Over 700,000 vehicles will be checked by the police for Vehicle Excise Duty, MOT status, and Insurance over three separate one day operations. This vital research will form the foundation for a campaign for change.

Alan, along with the NPED ambassadors, is calling for new legislation and is currently in talks with the Government and the Department for Transport about what they are calling the Vehicle Compliance Management Act (VCMA).

We will share more details of the research and legislation plans with you in future articles.

Find out more about NPED

You can find out more on the NPED website, or meet them at the Enforcement Excellence event in London on the 25th June, where Alan is presenting in the “Policy and practice” session.