How to complain about a parking ticket
Once upon a time, a Christmas time in fact, I got a parking ticket. I don’t like getting them. Catching the parking warden writing the ticket, I said that I had had to queue for a ticket and look, it was in my hand. (It has to be acknowledged that the ticket was alongside rather a large bag of shopping!) The warden took a photo and told me that he would make a note of it and I should appeal. So I did just that.
I appealed. I got no response. Now, if you have been following this blog for a bit you know I don’t like being ignored and so I was forced to complained again.
I emailed Waltham Forest and said “Oi, I’ve appealed why haven’t I heard from you? It’s past the time you should have responded by.” Might not have used those quite those words…
Three days later, I received a letter telling me that because I hadn’t paid the fine which was now going up to £60. Oh no it wasn’t! (Well it is pantomime time!) So, I wrote again requesting that they have the courtesy of responding and to look through the correspondence!
Council response to challenge
Got an auto response. Sigh. So I emailed the council again and started to bring out some new weaponry. I emailed the CEO. Always a good one – it speeds things up somewhat! Threatened to tell portfolio holders in the council. Might actually have just done that… Guess what happened? Immediate right off payment.
Now the lesson for you here is this. It is quite possible that the appeal process may go wrong even if the ticket was correctly issued. That’s what happened here. The appeal may or may not have been upheld, but they were out of time for responding. Therefore they were in breach of correct process and so they had no option but to throw out the charge.
The End.
So incompetence. It’s everywhere. Fight, fight, fight it! Anyone else got a good parking ticket story?
Help with challenging parking tickets
See How to take charge of a parking ticket for details of when and how you can appeal a parking ticket.
How to challenge and appeal a private PCN. It is a different process to challenge private parking fines.
Joe Lycett's Parking Ticket Story | 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown
Help with how to complain
For lots of information, help, advice, consumer laws and template letters for complaining about parking tickets GET THE BOOK! How To Complain: The ESSENTIAL Consumer Guide to Getting REFUNDS, Redress and RESULTS!
Want to get better at complaining? See 101 Habits of an Effective Complainer
4 Comments. Leave new
Thought I had lost mine after 2nd appeal but council rejected 2nd appeal with
suppling:
Incorrect Penalty Charge Notice Number
Incorrect Date of Contravention
Incorrect Location
Incorrect Vehicle Registration
So Traffic Penalty Tribunal rejected their charges
Good. 🙂 Thanks for sharing
IIRC you have to have received a reply by a certain period after making an appeal, not just that they have to respond. I used to appeal parking tickets for my couriers for fun (!) and I got off one once because the council had only sent their reply on the final date allowed. This meant, unless they couriered their reply to me, I could not possibly receive it in the specified time.
I can not tell you how much pleasure I took in writing to the council to tell them I was rejecting their rejection, and my legal basis for doing so.
Me 1 – them 0. It’s always worth arguing.
Excellent! It is, as you say always worth arguing!