The Towing Services Act 2024 and the Towing Services Regulation 2025 requires all regulated towing businesses and workers to create, maintain and retain specified records for prescribed periods. Towing businesses and workers must also provide copies of records to DTMI when requested.
To ensure records are accurate, reliable and suitable for compliance, auditing and investigative purposes, the regulations prescribe specific requirements regarding the way records are created, maintained and stored.
Records to be kept
Authorised Towing Businesses must maintain the following registers:
- Towing Worker Register
- Tow Truck Register
- Crash Site Attendance and Crash Towing Register
- Storage Yard Register
Other records that must be kept include:
- Completed Authority to tow (ATT) forms (mandatory form)
- Completed Authorisation Statements (e.g. MRWA authorisation to tow)
- Invoices
- Photographs of towed vehicles showing condition before and after tow as per Regulation 27
- Photographs showing evidence why a vehicle required recovery as per Regulation 49 (3)
- Dashcam visual recordings relating to a crash tow as per Regulation 28
- Record of Complaints
Manner and form
All general, records must be:
- in English;
- in a legible, clear and accurate form;
- in document form (that is, able to be displayed in a physical, printed form) or a form that can easily be converted into document form; and
- in a collated form or a form that can easily be collated so that all required records can be viewed together upon request.
In addition to the above, general records manner and form:
- completed authority to tow forms must be kept in hard copy and retained at the storage yard to which the vehicle is towed or at another storage yard of the towing service provider; and
- storage yard register must be kept in hard copy or in an electronic form that can be readily accessed and viewed at the storage yard on request.
All photograph and visual recording records must be:
- legible, clear and accurate;
- in a form that is exportable in a common digital format; and
- in a collated form or a form that can easily be converted into a collated form so that all required records can be viewed together upon request.
Register examples
To assist towing businesses and towing workers in meeting their record keeping obligations, DTMI has developed a range of register ‘template’ examples, available below.
The register examples include mandatory information fields, identified with an asterisk (*), as well as additional fields that may assist businesses, workers and DTMI.
Businesses and workers may either:
- use the provided examples; or
- develop their own forms and record-keeping systems.
Where businesses choose to develop their own forms, all mandatory (*) information fields must be included.
ATT and notifiable occurrence forms are in a specified formats and cannot be modified or kept in another format.
Keeping and Producing Records
Towing businesses and workers are required to retain all mandatory records for the following periods:
General records and photograph records – 2 years
All video recordings – 3 months
The Towing Governance and Regulation (TG&R) team may require records to be produced for compliance audits, inspections or investigations.
Records may be maintained electronically; however, they must be readily accessible and capable of being produced in a reasonable timeframe to comply with notices and directions given by authorised officers.
Records must also comply with the manner and form requirements and be capable of being easily viewed, printed or otherwise accessed by DTMI. Where records are maintained electronically, businesses should ensure they are stored in a commonly used digital format that can be readily accessed and reproduced.