Why Should I Pay Or Challenge My PCN Within 14 days?

This blog serves to answer the question “Why Should I Pay or Challenge My PCN Within 14 days?” The blog clearly explains why you should choose to challenge (or pay) your PCN within 14 days to achieve the best results from the process, in terms of your PCN challenge and the amount you end up paying. It is clearly possible to construct a PCN challenge within 14 days time if you practice the task regularly and are aware of the kind of effort and evidence that is required for appealing each kind of contravention.

Why Should I Pay Or Challenge My PCN Within 14 days?

You should pay or challenge your PCN within 14 days in order to avail the 50% discount which is awarded on doing so. If you choose to challenge your PCN within 14 days, you will end up with a PCN worth 50% of its original value, payable if you lose your challenge. Even if you further choose to challenge your PCN with the London Tribunals or the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, you will still be faced with the same prospect of paying 50% of the PCN’s original value even if you lose that appeal as well.

It is beneficial for you to leave a time frame of challenging or sending in your PCN challenge (via mail) before the 14th day as you can make a habit of rehearsing for writing a formal representation, which you can finalize and send in at the end. These templates of certain PCN contravention code challenges can be ready with you handy for immediate use.

Rehearsing for challenging a PCN can help you to regularly send in your formal representations within 14 days of getting a PCN, even with authentic evidence attached to your work. As you get used to the regular actions taking place at traffic violation scenes through rehearsal as well as practical experience, you will find it easier to be able to collect evidence from the location.

This evidence will now be available with you beforehand, so before you get a PCN, you will have recorded the video from the traffic violation scene (showing your vehicle moving correctly) and be able to use it to support your case against your soon to be served PCN.

In many cases, PCNs are not enforceable and you may be able to win your case and avoid having to pay your fine.

You could begin the process by speaking to an online solicitor for as little as £5. 

How Can I Challenge A PCN Within 14 days?

You can challenge a PCN within 14 days by filling in the online formal representation form on your council’s website (which is obviously the quicker method of getting things done) or by mailing in a formal representation to your council’s parking services address written on the reverse of your Notice to Owner document. If you want your mail PCN challenge to reach within 14 days, you need to ideally dispatch it by the 11th or 12th day at the latest given that first class mail takes 1-2 days to deliver your letter and second class mail takes between 3 to 5 days. 

You will have around 8 to 9 days to formulate your appeal, including for attaching evidence with your formal representation. This evidence can be in the form of photographs, documents, pay and display tickets, paid parking permits or medical certificates. If you send in your PCN challenge by second class mail, you will be required to send it in by the 8th or 9th day. 

The evidence that you require for your PCN challenge will already be available with you if you are careful to film regular videos of your road journeys in your council and save copies of your parking permits. The formal representation to be sent by mail can also be composed on a word processing software first and you can later transfer the text onto the paper version of your PCN challenge. This method ensures a richer quality of text and fewer mistakes in terms of displaying forgetfulness or a lack of awareness of the enforced contravention code in your appeal. 

You can take up to 5 to 6 days for composing your PCN challenge and write it down on the final formal representation form by the 9th day (or 12th day in case of online appeals). Once you have submitted the appeal it cannot be amended, so you need to write it down and attach evidence to your PCN challenge carefully. 

What is a Penalty Charge Notice?

A Penalty Charge Notice is a fine or monetary penalty for driving offences. A PCN can be issued for any legal traffic contravention, such as a parking contravention, moving traffic contravention or bus lane violation.

The charges of your PCN will also vary depending on whether it has been issued for a higher level violation or for a lower level violation. A PCN may also be served for refusing to pay road charges.

A PCN may be issued by a Civil Enforcement Officer or by CCTV. You will be given 28 days to respond to a Penalty Charge Notice.

 If you fail to pay the fine or appeal it, you will be sent a charge certificate which increases the PCN fine by 50% of its original value.

What will happen if I don’t pay or challenge my PCN within the 28-day limit?

If you fail to pay or challenge your PCN within the 28-day limit you will be sent a charge certificate from Transport for London (or the Traffic Penalty Tribunal). The charge certificate increases your PCN fine by 50%. You should pay the charge certificate within 14 days as it cannot be appealed and ignoring the charge certificate may result in the filing of a court order (for recovery of debts) against you by Transport for London (or by the Traffic Penalty Tribunal)..

When the charge certificate is also not paid within 14 days, you will receive a “Notice of Debt Registration” and a witness certificate from Transport for London (or from the Traffic Penalty Tribunal). The unpaid amount will be treated as a debt with the Traffic Enforcement Centre at the Northampton County Court.

The court order for debt recovery enforces that the charge certificate amount must be paid in full within 21 days or it will have to use additional powers to recover the money from your possession.

Can I further challenge a PCN with the London Tribunals if my appeal is dismissed by my local council (inside London)?

If you have received a PCN from a council of a local London Authority or by Transport for London, you can dispute your Notice of Rejection of Representations (from the Council) with the London Tribunals. 

Your Notice of Rejection of Representations has a form attached to it which needs to be completed.and posted to the London Tribunals. What you will write on the form will be the text of your appeal to the Notice of Rejection served by your council and needs to be carefully composed by mentioning your mitigating circumstances which led to the traffic violation or by stating how you think the traffic restriction was never breached. 

The contents of your appeal to the London Tribunals need to be based around evidence material as the London Tribunals is rejudging a case decided by your local council and will be provided by strong evidence from them to contest the trial.

Regardless of whichever council (local London Authority)you have recieved a Parking PCN from, you need to send the completed form to the following address (and ensure that you allow upto 2 days for first class mail to deliver your challenge and upto 5 days for second class mail) :

London Tribunals,

PO Box 10598,

Nottingham,

NG6 6DR

If you would prefer a quicker way to send in your challenge to the London Tribunals you can visit the London Tribunals Website. You can also choose to dispute the “Notice of Rejection” from your council with the London Tribunals online by clicking on the “Access the Appellants Portal” button on this webpage. 

All you will be required to do is simply enter your Vehicle Registration Number, PCN number, and the reference number or code from your “Notice of Rejection of Representations” letter. Evidence to be uploaded here can be different from the evidence material you have used to support the formal representation sent to your local council but the evidence needs to be properly matched with the case you have argued in your appeal to the London Tribunals.

Solid evidence relating to your traffic violation has to be ready to send to the London Tribunals which refutes the case put forward by your council.

 The London Tribunals is an independent adjudicating authority and it impartially considers the case put forward by your council and your version of the events at the traffic violation scene. So if you have some crucial evidence that shows something new which escaped the knowledge of the council or the CCTV camera monitoring the traffic violation scene, the London Tribunals will consider these details to be true.

Can I further dispute a Parking PCN with the Traffic Penalty Tribunal if my local council (outside London) has dismissed my challenge?

A PCN served from a local authority outside London can further be disputed with the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. The Traffic Penalty Tribunal is responsible for addressing challenges to Notices of Rejections of Representations from councils in England (outside London) and in Wales.

The Traffic Penalty Tribunal website requires you to enter details given on your Notice of Rejection of Representations, after opening this webpage. Once you have entered these details, you can click on “Next” to access the Traffic Penalty Tribunal PCN challenge portal. Before you can access this challenge portal, you need to click on “Start Your Appeal Here” on this webpage and “Submit and Appeal To The Traffic Penalty Tribunal Now” on this webpage. If you access the Traffic Penalty Tribunal’s main webpage, you need to first select the kind of PCN for which you have received a Notice of Rejection from your council. 

After this you will be redirected to the webpage where you have to select England (outside London). Once you click on England (outside London), you will be led to this webpage where you need to click on “Submit Your Appeal To The Traffic Penalty Tribunal Now”

You can watch this instructional video here to learn about your challenge process.  The Traffic Penalty Tribunal requires you to create an email address unless you already have one to dispute your council’s Notice of Rejection of Representations on its website. It is important for you to submit your challenge on the Traffic Penalty Tribunal Website within 28 days of being sent your Notice of Rejection to your Parking PCN..

Conclusion

This blog post addressed the question “Why Should I Pay Or Challenge My PCN Within 14 days?” You need to act fast whether you choose to pay or challenge your PCN as either process has some formalities you need to go through which require at least a few days to be performed. When you are writing down your PCN challenge you should make sure that you allow yourself enough time to recall the events of the traffic violation scene correctly and are able to identify the factors shown by your (photographic) evidence to be true.