Summary: Mr B complained about the Council’s delay in responding to his enquiries about a Penalty Charge Notice. We found fault in the actions of the Council which caused Mr B distress and frustration. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mr B, make a symbolic payment to him and improve its service for the future.

The complaint

1. Mr B complained that the London Borough of Havering (the Council) in respect of a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) from April 2023:
• unreasonably continued to pursue recovery of the PCN despite Mr B providing evidence that he had sold the car before the date of the contravention;
• reissued the PCN in December 2024 without reason, explanation or notice, even though the previous order for recovery had been revoked;
• failed to consider Mr B’s representations against the reissued PCN even though he submitted them only a few days outside the 28 day time limit which also included the Christmas and New Year period, and
• delayed excessively in responding to Mr B’s communications since January 2025, during which time the recovery escalated to enforcement agents.
2. Mr B says this caused him significant distress and frustration.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. The courts have said that where someone has sought a remedy by way of proceedings in any court of law, we cannot investigate. This is the case even if the appeal did not or could not provide a complete remedy for all the injustice claimed. (R v The Commissioner for Local Administration ex parte PH (1999) EHCA Civ 916)
5. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

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What I have and have not investigated

6. I have not investigated the process around the first PCN in April 2023, including why it was issued and why Mr B’s evidence was rejected, because he challenged the escalation through court. I have looked at the events since the revocation order was issued on 26 June 2024.

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered evidence provided by Mr B and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
8. Mr B and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Penalty Charge Notices

9. If a motorist breaks moving traffic rules, they might receive a fine. This fine is called a Penalty Charge Notice.
10. The authority will send the notice to the person who appears to own the vehicle (usually the registered keeper) by post. The notice will show the fine amount and how to appeal.
11. The motorist has 28 days from the date of the notice to pay the fine or ‘make representations’ against it.
12. The fine is usually halved if it is paid within 14 days in London or within 21 days outside London.
13. If the authority rejects the appeal, the motorist can appeal to the London Tribunals. 
14. The authority can issue a charge certificate which increases the fine by 50% if:

• the fine is not paid;
• the motorist does not appeal against the fine; or
• the appeal is not successful.

The Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC)

15. If the fine is still not paid, the authority can register the debt with the TEC at Northampton County Court. It can then ask enforcement agents (bailiffs) to collect payment for the fine and bailiff’s costs.
16. The motorist can apply to the TEC to ask them to cancel the registration of the debt. They do this by filling in a witness statement or statutory declaration.
17. If the motorist is successful, the TEC might order the authority to go back to an earlier stage which will reduce the fine and they will not have to pay the bailiff’s costs. It might also give them back their right to appeal.
18. If the motorist is too late to make a witness statement they might be able to ask the TEC to look at their application ‘out of time’. If the TEC will not look at the application ‘out of time’ they might be able to ask them to review their decision.

Traffic Management Act 2004: statutory guidance for local authorities outside London on civil enforcement of bus lane and moving traffic contraventions

19. This guidance says:

“Representations must be made within 28 days of service of the PCN. Local authorities have the discretion to accept late representations, and the Secretary of State would encourage them to use this discretion when a vehicle owner gives a valid reason for the delay and has strong grounds for representations.”

Background

20. Mr B sold his car in April 2023. Several weeks after this he received several PCNs and fines for different parking and driving offences which he did not incur, including a PCN from the Council.
21. He disputed the PCN on the basis he did not own the car, but the appeal was unsuccessful. The case continued over the next year until Mr B filed for an out of time statutory declaration with the TEC. The TEC issued a revocation order on 26 June 2024. The order said:

“This order does not cancel the original PCN. You should contact the Local Authority/Charging Authority as they may well take further action on it. The Authority should inform you as soon as possible if it intends to do so.

22. Mr B said he thought the revocation order had cancelled the debt and took no further action on it.

December 2024

23. The Council reissued the PCN on 11 December 2024 with no further explanation. It did provide notes on how to dispute the PCN by making formal representations within 28 days. The charge was £135.
24. On 13 January 2025 The Council issued a charge certificate increasing the debt to £195.
25. On 15 January Mr B sent an email saying he had received ‘an incorrect PCN’ and was no longer the owner of the vehicle.
26. The Council issued an Order for Recovery on 15 April increasing the debt to £205.
27. The Council responded to Mr B on 8 May. It said it could not do anything, and he would have to apply for a statutory declaration. He said the vehicle was not his and the PCN had been wrongly issued to him. He said he had tried calling the Council on the number provided but no-one had answered. He asked someone to call him as a matter of urgency.
28. In June 2025 Mr B tried to complain to the Council but it rejected the complaint saying that the Traffic and Parking team had its own appeals process. He then complained to us.
29. The Council passed the debt to Enforcement Agents increasing the debt to over £400 and Mr B made three partial payments between August and October.
30. The Council responded to his email of 8 May on 22 October 2025 saying the matter had now been passed to the Enforcement Agents and to contact them directly.
31. Mr B paid the debt in full which was approximately £400.
32. In response to our enquiries the Council said the delay in responding to emails was due to severe staff shortages (8.5 staff members against a requirement for 17) along with an exceptionally high volume of enquiries (currently over 6,000 emails awaiting response).
33. It said that additional staffing has now been approved, and agency staff were being recruited to help tackle the backlog. However, training new team members, implementing new systems, and retaining staff continued to affect response times

Findings

34. The revocation order was clear that the PCN had not been cancelled and that the Council could take further action on it. Mr B did not understand this was the situation which was not the fault of the Council. However, the revocation order also said that the Council should inform Mr B as soon as possible if it intended to reissue the PCN. This suggested that the Council should have contacted Mr B prior to reissuing the PCN to explain its intentions. But the Council did not contact him at all for six months and then simply reissued the original PCN. If it had contacted Mr B prior to this action, it may have helped Mr B understand that the PCN had not been cancelled and that he needed to take action if and when the Council reissued it. The failure to do so was fault.
35. Mr B did not make representations within 28 days of the Council reissuing the PCN, so the Council issued a Charge Certificate. The Council was not at fault here.
36. Two days after that and just a week outside the 28 day limit, Mr B sent an email to the Council saying that the PCN was ‘incorrect’. Owing to his misunderstanding of the process he believed the PCN was a mistake and could just be resolved informally. While this was not the case and the Council was entitled to pursue recovery in the absence of ‘formal representations’, I consider a prompter response to that email may have resolved the situation much sooner. The Council should also have considered using its discretion (as encouraged by the statutory guidance) to consider Mr B’s reasons for disputing the PCN, as they were only a week late.
37. Instead, the Council did not respond to Mr B for another four months and in the meantime escalated the recovery, increasing the debt by another £10. Although it was legally able to do this, it should have responded to Mr B’s email to explain the situation to him before proceeding. The failure to do so was fault and another missed opportunity to clarify the situation.
38. Even when the Council did respond it just said Mr B would have to make another statutory declaration. Given the excessive time it had taken to respond to Mr B and the long history of the case, I consider the Council should have considered addressing Mr B’s representation that the PCN was incorrect.
39. Furthermore, even though Mr B replied to the Council’s email the same day indicating that he was desperate to talk to someone to sort out the problem, the Council did not respond to him for another five months and again escalated the recovery to Enforcement Agents in the meantime increasing the charges significantly. This delay was fault, which meant Mr B did not understand the process or why the Council appeared to be ignoring his representations at every stage.
40. The Council’s response to the complaint was also not helpful as it simply said the Traffic and Parking team had its own appeals process. Regardless of the appeals process, the complaints team should have considered the delay from January to May in responding to Mr B’s email, as this appeared to be a systemic problem which was affecting many others and was separate to the right of appeal. It was a missed opportunity to acknowledge the problem and improve the service.
41. The Council also appears to have taken no action to inform those 6000 people in the backlog of its progress with reducing the backlog and an expected date for a response. It could consider putting some information on its website to better inform service-users. The failure to take any action is fault.

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Action

42. In recognition of the injustice caused to Mr B, I recommend the Council within one month of the date of my final decision:
• apologises to Mr B and makes a symbolic payment to him of £250.
43. I welcome the efforts the Council is making to improve its response times. But to ensure improvements are being made I also recommend within one month that the Council provides an update:
• on its current backlog of enquiries in the Traffic and Parking team and the average response times;
• this should include an action plan setting out the steps it has taken to improve the response times with specific, measurable, time specific targets for recruitment of staff;
• on the steps is has taken to advise those people awaiting a response to their emails (currently left unanswered); and
• any additional steps the Council is taking to improve the service.
44. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

45. I find fault causing injustice. The Council has agreed actions to remedy injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman