Appeal your Penalty Charge Notice

Can I appeal a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN)?

If you believe that you should not have received a Penalty Charge Notice, or that you have mitigating circumstances, you can appeal using our online portal.

Enter your Penalty Charge Notice number and vehicle registration number, then you can view your Penalty Charge Notice and make a challenge or representation.

Stages of appeal

There are three stages of challenging a Penalty Charge Notice:

  1. Informal challenge 
  2. Formal representation
  3. Traffic Penalty Tribunal

View details of the process on challenging your Penalty Charge Notice.

Informal challenge

If an informal challenge is received within 14 days of the date on which the penalty charge was issued, you will be given you a further 14 days to pay at the discounted rate in the event that your challenge is rejected.

If an informal challenge received between 15 to 28 days from the date of issue is rejected, you will be given a further 14 days to pay the full amount.

Please note: The online system will time out after ten minutes, so we suggest that you write your challenge elsewhere before pasting it into the text box provided.

Challenges may take up to 20 working days to process.

Formal representation

If the penalty charge is not paid or challenged within 28 days, we may serve a Notice to Owner. The Notice to Owner permits you to either make payment of the Penalty Change Notice or submit formal representations to us. 

If we decide that the charge should not be cancelled, you will be sent a Notice of Rejection of representations.

Traffic Penalty Tribunal

If your formal representation is rejected and you still disagree, you can appeal to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal which are independent adjudicators set up to give motorists and councils a formal tribunal hearing.

You cannot appeal until we have told you that your representation has been rejected. The Notice of Rejection of Representations allows the recipient 28 days to either pay the penalty charge notice or submit an appeal against our decision to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal.

What happens if I don’t pay?

If a Penalty Charge Notice is not paid or resolved through the representation and appeals process, a Charge Certificate will be issued. If the Charge Certificate remains unpaid, the penalty will be registered as a debt with the Traffic Enforcement Centre and an Order for Recovery will be issued. If the instructions of the Order for Recovery are not complied with, we will obtain a Warrant of Control which will be transferred to Certificated Enforcement Agents (formerly known as Bailiffs) for recovery.

View details of the process on ignoring or not paying your Penalty Charge Notice.

In this section